Office vacancy rates strong in Framingham, Natick

Grant Welker MathWorks's new offices going up at the former Boston Scientific campus on Route 9 in Natick. Office vacancy rates in Natick and Framingham were below 10 percent through the second quarter.

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By Grant Welker

Office vacancy rates in Framingham and Natick were below 10 percent through the second quarter of the year, exceeding nearly every other region outside Boston and its core suburbs, Perry Brokerage Research of Boston reported Thursday.

Rates were higher elsewhere, including the Boroughs - Marlborough, Northborough, Southborough and Westborough - where the vacancy rate was 16.2 percent. The average for the whole greater Boston market is 10.9 percent.

Framingham and Natick, where the vacancy rate was 9.3 percent, also added 22,000 square feet of office space in the quarter, according to the Perry report. That so-called absorption rate would have been lower if not for 52,000 square feet of space that the software company Globoforce opened in Framingham this spring.

The Boroughs added far more occupied office space, at 168,000 square feet for the quarter. The four communities, which have more than 14 million square feet of office space between them, offer a far more affordable market for office space, with square-foot rates of $19.52 that is far below the Boston market average of $38.58 and a fraction of those seen in Cambridge. Among the notable recent leases was Whole Foods Market's regional offices moving into 50,000 square feet in Marlborough.

More broadly, the Interstate 495 belt had a vacancy rate of 16.0 percent, down slightly from the previous quarter. The Interstate 128 belt's vacancy rate ticked up slightly to 10.8 percent.