Downtown Pittsburgh – A Landlord Market As Occupancy Rates And Rents Soar

Image via Wikipedia

Downtown Pittsburgh skyscrapers are filling up fast.  Occupancy rate in many buildings is in the 90 percent range.  This is a drastic change from a few years ago when many buildings had high vacancy rates.  Owners were making deals with tenants to keep them.

Now landlords are naming their price and tenants are willing to pay the asking rates.  Several large buildings have come off the market after investors decided they could not reinvest anywhere else and get a better return than in downtown Pittsburgh.  Pittsburgh, New York and San Francisco had the largest increases in average office rents in the fourth quarter of 2010.

The Gateway Center Complex (four buildings) was recently taken off the market as well as the 32-story EQT Tower.  The owners decided retaining ownership was in their best interest given Pittsburgh’s bullish market.

Eleven Stanwix Street has gone from a 50 percent to a 94 percent occupancy rate.  The building is now up for sale but the owner is still receiving calls to lease space.  The Oliver Building and the Regional Enterprise Tower are also for sale.  The USX Tower (Pittsburgh’s tallest building at 64-stories) is in the process of being sold and has reached a tentative agreement with the new group of investors.  The purchase price is around $250 million according to the Wall Street Journal.

As occupancy rates climb and office space becomes scare, tenants are willing to pay higher rates to be in a full building (which is characterized as being in the upper 80 to lower 90 percentage leased category).