Denver is an interesting case because, historically, a lot of the commercial real estate has been occupied by oil and gas (roughly 20%), as well as industries t

Denver is an interesting case because, historically, a lot of the commercial real estate has been occupied by oil and gas (roughly 20%), as well as industries that serve oil and gas (lots of lawyers, etc.). Oil and gas is a notoriously boom and bust as an industry. The knock on effect is that some management companies will hold back some vacancy at extremely high rates for the next boom. When you are dealing with 10 and 20 year leases, it can make sense to sit on an empty building through a few years of bust until a big tenant flush with cash shows up.