Activity in the West Orange County industrial submarket has been slowly trending upward, with the second quarter recording nearly 724,000 square feet of gross activity and 87,639 square feet of positive net absorption.
West OC had an average asking lease rate of 59 cents per square foot, an increase of 3 cents per square foot from the second quarter of 2012.
The submarket currently carries the highest availability rate and vacancy of the four submarkets, or 9.5% and 5%, respectively.
Office, M&W
It has an inventory of approximately 40.3 million square feet, and roughly 87% of the space consists of manufacturing and warehouse product.
In the office sector, West Orange County is the third largest submarket behind the Greater Airport Area and South Orange County, with a total of 5 million square feet of space.
The office vacancy level declined from 14.5% in the first quarter to 13.7%. The decline can be attributed to approximately 40,000 square feet of positive net absorption generated in the second quarter, bringing the year-to-date total to 128,312 square feet.
The average asking lease rate for the office market remained stagnant at $1.94 per square foot, though that was a year-over-year increase of 7 cents per square foot.
The submarket currently has nearly 9.9 million square feet of retail space, of which approximately 5.3%, or 397,440 square feet, is vacant.
The vacancy level decreased from 6% in the second quarter of 2012 to 5.3%. The net absorption remained positive, ending with 7,509 square feet, and the year-to-date net absorption was 43,382 square feet.
Average rents in the retail market continued on a downward trend as the average lease rate fell 5 cents from the first quarter to $1.99 per square foot. That was an 8.7% drop year-over-year.
