BD&C industry indexes

R.S. Means Co., P.O. Box 800, Kingston, MA 02364, (781) 585-7880, (800) 448-8182

For more data, visit R.S. Means on the Web at www.rsmeans.com. To use an interactive tool that helps estimate costs, visit www.buildingteam.com.

Because of a sharp run-up in prices during the spring and summer of last year, contractors paid an average of 2.6 percent more for structural steel during 2000 than during 1999.

However, the combination of falling demand, ample worldwide steel production capacity and ever-increasing competition from imports has been pushing prices lower in recent months. Average prices during both January and February of this year were lower than during the first two months of 2000 — the first time since October 1992 that structural steel prices in a given month have been lower than the same month one year earlier. Prices won't go into free-fall during 2001, but inflation in this building product group is likely to be at its lowest rate since the last recession.

Office vacancy rates for most U.S. metropolitan markets were at their lowest level in more than a 10 years as 2000 drew to a close. And for six of the nation's top 10 markets, the year-end 2000 vacancy rate was 10 percent or less, according to a survey by commercial brokerage firm Oncor International.

This year, slower job growth and dot-com layoffs should push office vacancies higher in most markets.

The highest vacancy rate among the top 10 office markets was registered in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area (15.8 percent), while Boston recorded the lowest (3.5 percent).

The nations industrial vacancy rate dropped to 5.9 percent during the fourth quarter of 2000, according to a survey conducted by the commercial/industrial brokerage firm of Grubb & Ellis. This is the first time that the rate has dropped below 6 percent since at least 1985, when the firm began tracking the market, and most likely the lowest industrial vacancy rate achieved in the past quarter century. But, as the the industrial vacancy rate is a lagging indicator, the effect of manufacturing sector layoffs and production cuts on these numbers have yet to be seen.