In northern NJ, vacancy remains slightly over 20% - but at least it inched in the right direction, according to C&W's analysis.

“The quarter-to-quarter and year-over-year vacancy rate comparisons are increasingly positive,” said Brennan. “As the economy continues to rebound, we expect that trend to continue.”

In central NJ, C&W said it the “usual suspects” among submarkets had the most activity: the Woodbridge/Edison area, Princeton, the I-78 corridor and Monmouth County. The regional vacancy rate edged down by 0.1 percentage point from March 31, to 17.7%.

Among the counties of northern NJ, only Morris County posted total net absorption for the quarter; in that county nearly 700,000 square feet was taken off the market. There was continued healthy demand within Parsippany and strong activity along the Route 10/24 corridor, according to the market report.

Last month's sale of the 250,000-square-foot 160 Park Avenue building in Florham Park to Automatic Switch Company contributed to the absorption total. Northern NJ's overall vacancy dipped by 0.6% during the quarter, to 20.4%.

Regional Activity

Region-wide activity did not quite match the 2-million-square-foot mark recorded in the previous two quarters. However, C &W said that at 1.8 million square feet, volume had remained “steady.”

“The Hudson Waterfront, Newark, and I-78 did see some slowing of demand during the quarter, but other market segments recorded notable gains,” says C&W in its report.

Morris County set the pace with its highest-volume leasing since 2011. A total of 605,000 square feet of new leases signed. Top deals included Merck's 150,000-square-foot lease at 2 Giralda Farms and Maersk's 7,000-square-foot deal at 180 Park Avenue, both in Florham Park, within the Route 10/24 submarket. In Parsippany, FM Global relocated to 55,000 square feet at 300 Kimball Dr.

In central NJ, the majority of activity was in leases of less than 10,000 square feet. However, transactions in the 10,000- to 25,000-square-foot range accounted for more than a quarter of the Q2 deals. Larger leases included Grant Thornton taking 31,288 square feet in Metropark in Iselin and First Choice Loan Systems signing for 26,770 square feet in East Brunswick.

Renewal activity was healthy, C&W says, with large tenants such as Celgene (95,847 square feet), First Energy (71,431 square feet), and OpenText (45,000 square feet) all opting to stay at current locations.

Asking rents didn't budge much overall, but the rate for Class A inched lower as some higher-priced spaces – in the $30 per square foot range - were filled up in Metropark, Morris County and along the I-78 corridor

The biggest sale of Q2 was Mack-Cali's nearly $97-million trade of Wyndham Worldwide's headquarters in Parsippany to Griffin Capital Essential Asset REIT.