ATLANTA—How hot is Atlanta's office market? PM Realty Group's latest facts and figures—and analysis—are just in.

Atlanta totaled nearly 3.7 million square feet of office space absorption for 2015. That is the region's highest annual occupancy gain since 2000.

On top of that, Atlanta's class A direct occupancy rates have improved by 300 basis points to 86.7% over the prior 12 months to reach a 14-year high. And Atlanta's class A full-service gross asking rents rose by $0.24 to an all-time high of $25.24 per square foot during the quarter and have jumped by 7.9% or $1.84 within the past 12 months to surpass its prior peak recorded in 2008.

We caught up with Bill Weghorst, executive vice president and managing director for PM's Southeast division, to get his analysis. He tells GlobeSt.com the Atlanta office market continues to improve because of increased demand, for example more local jobs, and diminishing supply. That, he says, has created one of the better landlord markets we seen in decades. 

"The economy continued its five-year expansion, adding roughly 86,000 jobs in 2015," Weghorst says. "This helped push Atlanta's office direst absorption to 3.7 million square feet in 2015, the highest annual occupancy gain in 15 years."

Weghorst points to two factors allowing landlords to continue to push office rental rates past historical levels. The first is low vacancy. The second is relatively little speculative construction compared to Atlanta's historical average.

"This is evidenced by the city-wide 8% increase in class A office rates in 2015," Weghorst says. "We expect the trend of rising rental rates to continue through 2016, if even at a slightly slower pace."

Did you know Millennials are flocking to one specific Atlanta office market? Read my recent column.