Employment counts remained steady with the DFW economy ranking second in the US with a 2.7% job growth rate. As such, DFW continues to show a strong demand for new office product coming to market, according to CBRE's Q1 DFW Office MarketView. There are 20 projects in the construction pipeline with a pre-lease rate of 57.7%, highlighting the demand for new office product. The market ended the first quarter with negative (470,212) square feet of absorption, mainly due to a sizeable corporation moving into its own building. Asking rates were dampened slightly for a DFW-wide average of $24.25, a decrease of 73 basis points from last quarter. A combination of corporate consolidations into smaller spaces and newly delivered construction kicked up vacancy rates by 90 basis points to 20.5%.—Lisa Brown

BY THE NUMBERS

AUSTIN, TX—Austin's overall vacancy rate grew to 8.1% in first quarter 2018, an increase of 20 basis points quarter-over-quarter, although down 30 basis points year-over-year. Net absorption registered 648,577 square feet as of the quarter's end, outpacing the five-year quarterly average of 516,365 square feet. New construction delivered during the first quarter stood at 954,758 square feet, as the development pipeline has soared, averaging 4.2 million square feet during the past five quarters. Full-service average asking rents dropped slightly by $0.06 per square foot quarter-over-quarter to $34.86 per square foot, after a record-breaking close to 2017 at $34.94, per NAI Partners' Q1 2018 Quarterly Austin Office Market Report.