Office rents in Pittsburgh have risen 12.4 percent over the past two years, to $21.13 per sq. ft. Vacancy in the city’s office market currently averages 10.4 percent.

San Diego saw its rents grow 12.7 percent since the second quarter of 2013, to $29.88 per sq. ft. The city has a vacancy rate of 12.6 percent.

Office rents in Dallas/Ft. Worth increased 13.4 percent and now average $20.75 per sq. ft. Vacancy in the market is among the highest on this list, however, at 17.9 percent.

In New York, rents increased 14.1 percent, to a very healthy $69.71 per sq. ft. New York is currently experiencing a vacancy rate of 7.1 percent.

Smaller cities in the Southern and Western U.S. dominate CoStar’s list of top markets for new development, but there are a few exceptions.

“Boston is an exception here, as a tier one metro in the Northeast that is powered so much by education and biotech in Cambridge,” says Rybczynski, who put Boston at number four on his list of top markets for new development.

Developers had 17,707 new units of multifamily housing in some phase of the development process in Boston in the third quarter of 2018, according to CoStar. That works out to 8.6 percent of the current inventory.

But only a few of these planned apartments have actually broken ground. MPF counted far fewer new rental apartments under construction in the Boston metro area, equal to just 1.9 percent of the inventory across the broader metro area. The difference between MPF and CoStar shows how long it can take for a planned project to be approved by local officials and actually start construction.

California’s Orange County experienced a 1.5 percent increase in sales.

The San Francisco Peninsula, which includes such technology hotspots as Palo Alto and Mountain View, experienced rent growth of 18.4 percent, with its average rents rising to $60.84 per sq. ft. Vacancy in the market is at 8.0 percent.

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Raleigh’s office vacancy has fallen steadily due to employment growth. Chang notes that 27,000 new jobs are expected in 2017, up from 23,000 in 2016. Additionally, rents are growing by 2.5 percent due to demand generated by employer growth throughout the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Research Triangle, providing a good balance relative to other markets tracked.

According to a Colliers International’s fourth quarter 2016 report, vacancy in the Research Triangle dropped to 7.9 percent, as the area absorbed 1.3 million sq. ft. of space during the previous 12 months, and vacancy in the Central Business District (CBD) at year-end was even lower, at 5.0 percent. Tight vacancy resulted in a 14.1 percent year-over-year spike in asking rents, to $27.10 per sq. ft. in the CBD and a 3.00 percent spike, overall to $21.51 per sq. ft.

Investment sales volume in the market rose 8.0 percent, according to Marcus & Millichap, with investors targeting class-B buildings due to the lack of availability of premium assets. This resulted in a 5.0 percent drop in average price, to $135 per sq. ft.

In the Silicon Valley, rents went up by 28.1 percent since the second quarter of 2013, to $49.20 per sq. ft. Office vacancy here averages 7.0 percent.

Not surprisingly, office rents in San Francisco rose 30.7 percent over a two-year period, to $67.99 per sq. ft. Vacancy here was also the lowest of any market on this list, at 5.7 percent.