Industry watchers are seeing some hopeful signs in Bend’s commercial real estate market.

Bend real estate firm, Compass Commercial has released a survey showing retail vacancy rates in Bend dropped to just over 9 percent last quarter. That’s a two percent decline.

Erich Schultz is a partner and a principle broker with Compass Commercial.

Erich Schultz: “What we’ve seen is that the best locations are leasing. Now, the landlords might not be getting the rental rates they want. Certainly those are down from 3 or 4 years ago. But they are leasing and they are getting income on those properties.”

Schultz says office and industrial rentals have not done as well. He says vacancy rates for offices continues to hover around 20 percent. Shultz says many industry watchers regard a healthy vacancy rate to be about 5 to 7 percent.

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