Have you ever wondered how office space leasing varies from country to country. Are the standards for lease term and rental rates calculations the same in London, Paris, Sydney or Moscow as they are in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles? How about options to renew. What are the standard guidelines in each country? As an example, Greece has a standard of a 12 year lease, but there is an escape clause after 2 years...

If you have ever been curious bout how different countries lease office space, Colliers International has published their 2010 Worldwide Office Leasing Guidelines that reviews how office leasing is done in 58 different countries and is available for download.

It seems as though it has been a couple of weeks of good news for the US office space market.  CoStar has just come out with their State of the U.S. Office Market: Mid-Year 2010 Review & Forecast.According to their study, office space vacancy rates have stabilized and office vacancy rates that appear to have peaked and are no longer on the rise .

A few notable points from the report:

Office job growth has spurred positive net Office Space absorption. Office Vacancy Rates have peaked with some office markets even reporting Increases in average office Rents.

Of the 20 largest office markets, eight of them posted positive net absorption so far this year, three of them had little or no change, but nine did post negative net absorption. Washington DC led the country with 2 million square feet of net absorption followed by Denver with 1.6 million and Minneapolis with 1.3 million. New York City had 2.8 million square feet of negative net absorption, Los Angeles with a negative 2 million and Philadelphia at negative 1 million. But even the markets experiencing negative absorption were doing so at much reduced levels compared with last year.

New York, Long Island and Minneapolis office space markets are all now reporting single-digit office space vacancy rates of 9% or less.

If the current pace of office space absorption and delivery trends hold, CoStar projects the office vacancy rate will go from 13.6% to less than 11% sometime in 2013.

From a commercial real estate perspective, as long as you have any net job growth, it is eating away at the vacancies out there. The most important thing here is that this positive employment growth in the office sector will be reducing standing inventories of (available) space.

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With office space vacancy rates at recent time highs, office rental rates down as much as 30% in many office markets and no bottom found in the woes for office building owners, now is a great time to renegotiate your lease. Even if you have 2 or more years left on your current office lease you may be surprised at the willingness of landlords to renegotiate. It is not a market specific phenomena, but one that is nationwide. It doesn't matter if you lease office space in Manhattan, Chicago, Houston, Denver, Los Angeles or even small markets such as Fresno, Raleigh or Rochester. Every office space market has been affected.   Many office building owners are having financial difficulties not only on the occupancy side, but also on the mortgage side. If a landlord has a refinance coming due, you may find yourself in a great position to blend and extend.  What this means is that you would extend your office space lease for another 3 to 5 years at a lower rate in order for the landlord to show to their office building lender that they have long term office space tenants.  No office building owner will agree to reducing a financially strong tenant's rent, unless the restructured agreement provides them with some sort of economic benefit. In this case while you are paying less rent, it turns out to be a win-win situation since your new lease will help in the refinance process for the office building owner.

How do you get this process started?
The best way is to contact your Local OfficeFinder Office Tenant representative. Office Tenant Representative services won’t cost you anything and they are professionals at negotiating office leases. OfficeFinder Office Tenant Reps average over 12 years of experience and many have advance designations earned though demonstrating their skills and knowledge. It is a no lose proposition for you. Give them a try. There is no obligation.

January 8, 2010 WSJ - The office market in Washington, D.C., is poised to topple New York as the nation's most expensive, reflecting the declining fortunes of the nation's financial center and the government expansion under way in the U.S. capital.

Rents declined in almost all of the 79 American cities tracked by Reis Inc., a New York based-research firm, in the fourth quarter of 2009. The largest fall was in New York, where average effective rents -- or the net amount tenants pay after landlord concessions -- fell nearly 20% to $44.69 per square foot annually. It was the sharpest decline in rents ever recorded by Reis since it began compiling data in 1981.

By contrast, average rents in Washington were $41.77 per square foot, down 3% annually. Reis estimates that by the end of this year, rents in New York will come down to around $41.07, slightly below their estimates for Washington of $41.27.

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Have you seen any ads for sublease office space on MySpace? Don’t be surprised if you do.  MySpace has around 420,000 square feet of office space in Playa Vista, California with a 12 year lease that is sitting empty. They are currently paying more than $1-million dollars a month for the Los Angeles area office space and have total lease obligation of about $350-million over the 12 year term. Rent is scheduled to go up to nearly $2-million next June. Needless to say, it is not a great time to have excess office space, especially true in California.

MySpace signed the 12-year lease in August 2008, when the number of people using MySpace was blossoming and the social network was running out of space in its Beverly Hills offices.  The lease began in June of this year. The problem is that since then is that Facebook has taken off at the expense of MySpace. The parent company, News Corp, announced recently that they will receive $100-million less than expected from Google after failing to hit traffic targets.

News Corp also announced that they will be taking a $180-million write off “as a result of excess facility space that we no longer need.”

Additional Information:
Globe Investor
WebProNews