Orange County Register

Voit Commercial Brokerage reports that construction of O.C. office buildings plunged 90.8% in the second quarter to 325,276 square feet. Last year in the second quarter, 3.5 million square feet was under construction.

Jerry J. Holdner Jr., Voit vice president of market research says, it’s both a sign of the economy as well as the end of a construction binge that saw 7 million square feet of office space — 7 percent of O.C.’s total market — built in the last two to five years. For the first six months of this year, 1.4 million square feet of new office development came on line, mostly in the airport and South County area. A total of 1.7 million square feet is expected to be built this year.All the added space pushed the second quarter office vacancy rate to 14.46%. A year ago, vacancies were at 8.95%. About 12% is the norm.

“You have two negatives — a lot of new product without tenants and you have got an economic slowdown,” says Holdner. “The biggest thing going forward will be jobs, jobs, jobs.”In that regard, he says things look better. He cited a Chapman University forecast for the county to lose 18,000 payroll jobs this year but to bounce back with 14,000 new jobs in 2009.

Other real estate news …

• LA/OC home prices off 23%, by the square foot
• Big Orange property index takes worst hit in 13 years
• Stocking up on self storage
• Poll finds Wall Street’s real estate fears ease a bit
• Housing bubble hurt Calif. renters, too
• Gov. Arnold says Calif. will ‘grow out’ of housing ills by ‘09

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