The southeastern Wisconsin office real estate market absorbed 510,657 square feet of space in 2014, including 85,898 square feet in the fourth quarter, according to the latest quarterly report from Xceligent and the Commercial Association of Realtors Wisconsin.
The region’s office space vacancy rate in the fourth quarter of 2014 was at 17.96 percent, down from 19.25 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013.
The sale of the long vacant former Blue Cross Blue Shield office building, a 249,334-square-foot building at 401 W. Michigan St. downtown, for a conversion into an apartment building and the sale of a 131,660-square-foot office building at 801-03 W. Michigan St. downtown to Marquette University provided a boost to the office market data for the west side of downtown. The two buildings were removed by Xceligent from the tracked data set. As a result the class B office space vacancy rate for the downtown west submarket fell from 30.75 percent in the third quarer to 17.93 percent in the fourth quarter.
