Available office, industrial space in Bend shrinks

Published 12:00 am Saturday, October 31, 2015

Office and industrial space for lease in Bend shrank again in the third quarter, according to a survey by Compass Commercial Real Estate Services.

The firm found 7.4 percent of 2.5 million square feet of office space it surveyed was available to lease, according to Compass Points, its quarterly market summary. The vacancy rate fell 1.8 percentage points between the second and third quarters, according to Thursday’s report.

The vacancy rate for office space in Bend fell steadily for three years until the second quarter of this year, when it rose slightly, according to Compass Points. Office leasing in the third quarter “reversed the one-quarter blip” and resumed the trend in shrinking vacancies that began in second quarter 2012 with a 21.9 percent vacancy rate, according to the report.

Office space is hardest to find on Bend’s west side, where the vacancy rate dropped to 4.1 percent, the survey found. The U.S. Highway 97-Third Street corridor had a rate of 13.4 percent.

The amount of industrial space for lease in Bend shrank from 7.8 percent to 6.3 percent of the 303 buildings surveyed. Compass Commercial found a little more than 263,000 square feet available for lease in the third quarter.

Citywide, Bend has about 4.5 million square feet of retail space, and the vacancy rate in the third quarter, 6.4 percent, was unchanged from the previous quarter, the survey found.

In Redmond, 118,000 square feet of industrial space was available to lease in the third quarter, out of 1.49 million square feet citywide. The third quarter marked the sixth consecutive quarter of decreasing vacancies, according to Compass Points.

— Reporter: 541-617-7815,

jditzler@bendbulletin.com