According to CB Richard Ellis the overall Silver Spring, Maryland area had an historical low amount of rentable office space available at 3.4%. The downtown area claimed 3.8% and even better Northern Silver Spring achieved a vacancy of 2.0%.The real estate research firm said “Silver Spring direct vacancy reached a historical low of 3.4% for fourth quarter 2005, compared to 14.5% ten years ago.”. This compares well with areas like Ballston, Rosslyn and even Tysons Corner in Virginia at 8.51%, 4.73% and 10.40% respectively. Also worth noting is that office vacancy in Montgomery county is at its lowest in 5 years.

Commentary: What does this all mean? In mathematical terms the vacancy rate is vacant building feet divided by the net rentable area with a lower percentage meaning less rentable space available. Basically Silver Spring is in high demand and needs a lot more office space! With that said there is very little in terms of commercial office development in the works for the CBD, and is the contrary to areas of higher vacancies that still manage to produce over 600,000 square feet. With the huge glut of housing proposed for the CBD (over 20 projects and 2000 units in the CBD alone) and a low office vacancy, it would only seem like common sense that there would be more development of office space. This would keep a balance in the city as people would live in close proximity to where they work and mitigate traffic.