Low vacancy and high pre-leasing facilitate rent gains. After a decade-long trend of the mean retail asking rent staying between $10.00 and $11.60 per square foot, Cleveland logged an unprecedented gain of 7.4 percent across the first half of 2023, surpassing $12 per square foot. Much of this increase was driven by demand for single-tenant space downtown, allowing the segment’s mean asking rent here to surge to $15.28 per square foot in June. A sparse urban construction pipeline is helping keep availability low. Entering July, vacancy fell to 1.9 percent, which is 210 basis points below the local long-term mean. As of October, roughly 90 percent of all space slated for 2023 was pre-leased, aiding overall rent and vacancy metrics.