Office Mania Redux

As I've previously noted, we now have a lot of office towers planned for SLC (Whether they all get built is another matter. Anyone else remember the huge office towers originally planned for the Triad Center?). We're seeing similar figures nationwide. The U.S. office vacancy rate dropped from 16.3% at year-end 2004 to 14.7% at year-end 2005. The market absorbed 61.3 million sf for the year, the most since 2000, and rents rose 3.2%, the most in five years. The one notable difference between the national figures and Utah was that nationwide there was a relatively sane 35.4 million sf of new space completed, considerably more than 2004 but still considerably less than the 126.1 million sf completed in 2001, which was still part of the froth from the dot com boom. Utah, unfortunately, is already building at a dot com rate. Will 2006 end up being a repeat of 1986?