Ryan Severino

The heyday of department stores is clearly in the past while apparel retailers( for example) compete fiercely with e-commerce.

If both the economy and the labor market stay the course, which is our general expectation, they should create an environment that pushes vacancy down toward 15.7 percent in 2016, while rent growth continues to accelerate toward 3.5 percent on an annual basis.

Continued gains in the labor market are driving increased demand for office space, over the last seven quarters, not only has the number of total jobs created per month gradually increased, but the number of higher-wage, office-using jobs has also increased.

We should expect only a modest increase in rent growth in 2015 due to the still-elevated vacancy rate.