East Cambridge office rents hit record high

Office rents in Kendall Square have hit an all-time high of almost $67 per square foot, breaking a record last set in 2001, according to the real estate brokerage Transwestern RBJ.

Transwestern said the average asking rent on a top-tier office space in East Cambridge set a new record of $66.63 in the final quarter of 2014, edging out the previous record of $65.85 set in 2001. East Cambridge’s vacancy rate of 6.7 percent was lower than many parts of Boston’s central business district, but higher than those of the smaller office markets of South Station, North Station, and Longwood, whose vacancy rates ranged from 2 to 4.4 percent.

The report looked at office space, and did not analyze the market for lab space, which is also growing rapidly.

The broker also reported that companies leased more office space in Seaport District than in any other Boston submarket last year, moving into 984,000 square feet of space. The district’s average rent of $56.59 per square foot was just below the $59 reported in the Back Bay, which was the highest in the city of Boston.

For the entire year, the real estate firm said businesses leased a net total of 3.6 million square feet of office space in the Boston area. The regional vacancy rate of 12.8 percent was the lowest recorded by Transwestern since 2001, and it varied from 6.8 percent in Cambridge to 19.8 percent in real estate markets along Interstate 495.

The findings were reported in Transwestern RBJ’s most recent quarterly report on the market for office space in Greater Boston.