CHICAGO—United Stationers has just signed the second largest transaction in suburban Chicago year-to-date, a long-term lease extension for 198,000 square feet at One Parkway North in Deerfield along I-94, and the relatively few concessions agreed to by owner Arden Realty, Inc. illustrates how this corner of the regional office market has changed.

“The true class A properties on the North Shore have converted to a landlord's market where rents continue to go up and fewer lease concessions are needed,” Christopher G. Cummins, senior vice president of Colliers International, tells GlobeSt.com. This stands in stark contrast to a few other suburban submarkets and to class B properties throughout the suburbs, where landlords still have more of a struggle to hang on to tenants.

In the first quarter, the suburban vacancy rate ticked up from 21% to 21.2%, according to a Colliers report. The rate in the North submarket hit 23.1%, also a boost of about 20 bps. And even though the average rate for all class A office properties in the North dropped a little, it remained quite elevated at 26.5%. “However, when considering high quality, true class A properties, in the North market, vacancy was 17.1% at that end of the first quarter,” Colliers found.