Available Houston office sublease space breaks eight million sf

​​​HOUSTON – Market analysis by NAI Partners shows that, over a year into the oil downturn, sublease availability for local Class-A and -B office space has broken eight million sf.

This is more than double the historic average of 3.3 million sf, the firm says.

Since the flood of sublease space began in second quarter 2014 with the oil downturn, sublease has increased 48 percent for Class-A and -B combined and 63 percent for Class-A alone.

Typically, sublease availability accounts for about 9.2 percent of total availability, with direct space at 90.8 percent. Sublease availability currently represents 15 percent of total space for Class-A and -B combined, reducing direct space to 85 percent.

More than 80 percent of the current sublease space is in large blocks of 50,000 sf or more, and 76 percent is concentrated in Class-A buildings.

Extensive sublease availability is not equally distributed across the city’s submarkets. Rather, 3.6 million of the eight million sf are limited to one geographic area of West Houston, including Katy West, Katy East, and Westchase.