Submarket Snapshot: Santa Monica’s office market in Q1 2016

Office rents are high in the heart of Silicon Beach, but so is vacancy.

Santa Monica’s 9.3 million-square-foot office market saw 14.4 percent vacancy in the first quarter. It had a higher percentage of empty space than the West Los Angeles market at large, which saw an average of 12 percent vacancy, according to a report by Transwestern. 

The area also saw 74,403 square feet of negative absorption.

Yet its rents continued to outpace West Los Angeles averages. The average asking rent for office space in Santa Monica was $5.12 a square foot a month in the first quarter, compared to the Westside average of $4.52.

There was 422,000 square feet of office space under construction in the first quarter, including the more than 200,000-square-foot Pen Factory adaptive reuse project.