Reset for Recovery

REVIEW SUMMARY
Industry. Commercial real estate
Trend. Rising vacancies, falling rents
Key. Cheap rents, more credit and less government will help the Gulf Coast region recover.

The last time there was this much vacant office space on the Gulf Coast was during the last commercial real estate downturn in the early 1990s.
But overbuilding prompted that crisis. This time, job losses have sent the overall vacancy rate in office buildings to 20% or higher in many areas of the Gulf Coast.

For example, in the Westshore business district of Tampa, Florida's largest office market, the vacancy rate surged to 21.8% in the fourth quarter from 12.6% in the same quarter in 2008, according to Cushman & Wakefield. The Tampa Bay area lost 51,000 jobs in 2009, according to the state's December employment data.