Tampa Bay office market surging

How hot is the Tampa Bay office market? Scorching — if 2015 sales volume is any indication.

Consider that last year, $967.43 million was invested to buy in excess of 5.34 million square feet of product, according to information from Real Capital Analytics and CoStar Group and compiled by services firm CBRE Inc.

While that dollar volume was up an impressive 13% from 2014, when $853.87 million traded hands to buy just less than 6 million square feet of space, the percentage gain was a fraction of the amount sold six years ago.

In 2009, by comparison, just $98.3 million worth of product sold during the height of last decade's economic recession -- making 2015's performance 884% greater.

The region's per-square-foot price increases were also impressive, up 77% in 2015 from 2009 levels, according to a year-end CBRE office market report.

And while the commercial real estate services firm expects more investment and sales activity to shift to the suburbs this year, it doesn't believe the pace will lighten considerably.

“We believe a continued trend for the year ahead will be institutional owners looking to continually prune their portfolio of older non-core assets,” CBRE stated.