From the Washington Post on our region's office vacancies:
"[T]he Washington area had its slowest leasing period since the second quarter of 1995, according to data from CoStar, a real estate research firm in Bethesda.Vacancy Rates, Q1 2008 vs. Q1 2007:
. . .
'What I am wondering is, with supply coming online so much faster than demand, who is really going to step up and take that space?" Hartley said. 'There are still a lot of people talking about continued development, and that is a little worrisome. We really need to see a lot more activity from all sectors. We need to see more government leasing, we need to see private-sector leasing'.
The Washington area's vacancy rate at the end of the first quarter was 11 percent, up from 9.8 percent at end of the first quarter in 2007".
DC: 9.1% vs. 8.5%
Reston and Herndon: 15.4% vs. 11.2%
Route 28 South: 17.9% vs. 11.9%
Prince George's County: 17.1% vs. 14.8%
Montgomery County: 9.8% vs. 8.9%
4 comments:
"We need to see more government leasing..."
easy solution, create a Vacant Office Space Leasing Corporation. it can be public/private like the GSEs where it has the full guarantee of taxpayers so it can borrow at preferred rates but it pays its executives Wall Street-sized bonuses.
it's charter will be to lend money to anyone with a business plan (preferably written on a napkin) for the express purpose of renting office space.
former Fannie exec Raines and former HUD exec Alphonso Jackson can be co-CEOs.
Even better, we can just take taxpayer money and use it to rent out a large amount of office space.
This office space will then be turned over to small businesses with business plans written on napkins at below market rates.
This way office space vacancies will stay low, prices will stay high, and the taxpayer will pay huge amounts of money to maintain this situation rather than just letting the market work...
Here is one area where Leroy and I agree; the Dulles area was massively over-built in the hope that Reston would become a major tech center; when that didn't happen, you were left with expensive office parks near a major airport but otherwise not especially conveniently located to anything. I'd rather place a bet on Tyson's assuming the get the metro squared away.
leroy- there's a critical flaw w/ your plan to give office space away as opposed to giving money away for leasing office space (my plan):
how can those "business owners" spend money on consumable goods if you don't give them the money for the office space??
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