Area office and lab space piling up, but rents steady - Boston Business Journal:

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Among the companies looking to shedspace are: , whichy has put 100,000 square feet on the market for subleaser at 500 Boylston St.; , which is marketing about 50,009 square feet of space for subleas at the Hancock Towetr and another 30,000 square feet at 31 St. James St.; and , whicyh is marketing about 50,000 square feet at 10 St. Jameas St. This year’s grim economy has resultedd in a market freeze as tenants delat real estate decisions and even reducde the amount of space they occupg in priceyoffice towers. To be sure, several largee blocks of office space have recently hit the subleaser marketin Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood.
The market has largely withstoodthe downturn, said William Motley, managing directot of . Motley said at the end of the secondf quarter this year therewas 825,0090 square feet of subleasew space on the market in Boston, comparedd with 1.3 million square feet the same time last year and 2.2 millionb square feet the same quarter three years ago. “Boston has managerd to withstand this economic downturn reasonably well,” Motley said, adding that he’s still worried about what coulrd happen if the economy continues to Tenants trying to sublease space typically charge less than what a landlorsd would charge to lease the spacs directly.
However, landlords will lower rent to Companies typically sublease space in economivc downturns to reduce expenses or cut back on unneedede space asgrowth stalls. So far, the subleas e market hasn’t dramatically affected rents. At the end of the second quarter, rents were $63.83 for Clasws A space in Boston, which posted a 9 percentr vacancy rate, according to Brendajn Carroll, vice president of research at Richard BarryJoyce & Partners LLC. A year rents averaged $53.54 per square foot with a vacancy rateof 9.6 Carroll also said the Boston marker has been helped by the fact that constructiohn has cooled. There is just 2.
1 million squarse feet of office space under constructionj inGreater Boston, compared with 9.6 million square feet of office construction in thirfd quarter of 2000. But crackds are beginning to show. In where the demand for lab space has slowedr and large blocks of new space aresittingt vacant, pharmaceutical and medical devicd companies are beginning to give back space. Two companies and — have recentlyy enlisted real estate agents to subleaseelab space. Alkermes is marketin 90,000 square feet of spaces for sublease at 88Sidney St. and anotheer 25,000 square feet at 64 Sidney St. Alkermed also recently sublet 11,000 square feet of space at 245First St.
, said Peter a vice president at Jonew Lang LaSalle hired to sublease Alkermes space. Bekariajn said the availabilityrate — or the amount of space available for lease and sublease — stands at 22 percent and is the highest it’s been since the end of 2005. Much of lab space availabld in Cambridge is largely due to 301Binnegy St. — a 400,000-square-foot lab building that is 75 percenyt vacant, said Bekarian.
Other such as are absorbinf bits of lab The company recently signed a leasdefor 50,000 square feet of lab spacs at 200 Tech