Dive Brief:

• A report from Reis Inc., a real-estate data-gathering company, shows that companies added more square feet in the first quarter of this year – 9.8 million – than in several recent quarters, but that is still well behind pre-recession numbers, when contractors were building a lot of space.
• During the 2000s, office space consumption grew by anywhere between 12 million and 20 million square feet each quarter.
• The last quarter of 2013 saw growth of 9 million square feet, and the two years before that averaged 5.2 million per quarter.

Dive Insight:

The stronger growth last quarter took a tenth of a point off the national office vacancy rate, from 16.9% to 16.8%. In the boom times, however, it was much lower – bottoming out at 12.5% in mid-2007 – so the improvement now does not seem likely to bring a big bump in commercial construction for that sector.