Office stats for the statistically insatiable

Somebody new to Oklahoma City, seeing empty office space downtown, asked me something the other day that, honestly, I don’t think much about:

How does the office market here compare with other cities?

That’s not something I follow because except for real estate nerds, statistics geeks and maybe economic development dweebs (y’all know who you are and that I love you), who cares?

What difference does it make? It doesn’t much matter except for bar bets and the kind of ingrained loyalty that has people cheering for either the Patriots or the Eagles tomorrow. (Patriots here, like any Dallas Cowboys fan raised right.)

What really matters is what shape are we in now, compared with the past, and what’s the outlook?

The overall office vacancy rate for Oklahoma City at the end of 2017 was 18 percent, with an average rent rate of $18.92 per square foot per year, according to Price Edwards & Co.’s year-end report available at www. priceedwards.com.

For the curious, here are some comparisons from the year-end office outlook report by JLL (Jones Lang LaSalle), the Fortune 500 real estate investment services firm, available at www.us.jll.com/unitedstates/en-us/research/ property/office:

• Charlotte, because some people around here dream big: 11.5 percent vacancy, average rent $26.77.

• Indianapolis, because it’s a fair comparison to Oklahoma City in some ways: 17.8 percent vacancy, $20.17 average rent. (See? Notice how close these are to Oklahoma City’s.)

• Austin, because, you know, Austin: 10.8 percent vacancy, average rent $37.24.

• Denver, because, you know, skiing and the Rockies and stuff: 14.8 percent vacancy, average rent $28.83.

Now, the neighborhood:

• Dallas-Fort Worth: 19.9 percent vacancy, average rent $27.31, market cooling but diversified enough to handle it.

• Houston: 23.2 percent vacancy, $30.55 average rent, market hurting for the same reason Oklahoma City is. The crude oil price swoon of late 2014-15, followed by technology-driven energy workforce reduction.

But even the similarities only go so far.

“Real estate is like politics. It’s all local,” said Managing Broker Craig Tucker, who prepared the Price Edwards report. “Yeah, Houston is kind of a big brother to us in that they’re beholden to the energy industry also.

“But our big brother’s been eating a lot of steroids. That market’s 100 times the size. You have so many companies headquartered there that it’s just a massive market. But they have the same issues: lots of subleased space, lots of shadow space. It’s going to take them a long time to come back, as well.”

Dallas? “A little more insulated because they’re not so energy-dependent,” Tucker said.

The closest comparison to Oklahoma City, Tucker said, regionally for sure, is Fort Worth: a little bigger. Oil. Cattle. Underlying cow town/Western attitude and culture.

“I’ve always referred to Oklahoma City as the world’s largest small town. Fort Worth’s a little bit that way, too,” he said.

The smaller city’s fortunes are so tied to Big D’s that it’s hard to find stats for Fort Worth, where the West begins, apart from Dallas, where, Will Rogers reportedly said, “the East peters out.”

The closest I could get on Friday afternoon was the year-end vacancy rate for the central business district only, from CBRE, by way of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce: 12.9 percent. In Oklahoma City, it was 18.1 percent.

What’s that tell you? Nothing, really, without some explaining, and that can be found elsewhere in this section and in the Price Edwards report.

So, now that we have comparative office vacancies illuminated and elucidated, how about another Texas quote?

Tucker said, “As Dan Jenkins once said, if you want to see Atlanta, you go to Dallas. If you want to see Texas, you go to Fort Worth.”

I say, even better than that, statistically speaking, was when Jenkins immortalized the best nickname for Texas this side of “Drive Friendly” or “DQ” or whatever: “Baja, Oklahoma.”