Move over, Back Bay, and take a hike, Financial District.

The epicenter of the Boston business community can no longer be found in the Hub, but rather across the Charles in Cambridge – at least when it comes to pricey office space.

For the skeptics, just check out some of the rents being bandied about in Kendall Square. Building owners in the lab- and office-packed Cambridge neighborhood are quoting $80 a square foot for prime space, with the sky the limit, tenant advisory firm Cresa Boston notes in a new report.

That is, when there is actually space to lease. The vacancy rate for office space in the Cambridge neighborhood is a practically air-tight 0.6 percent, Cresa notes.

In fact, it’s getting so crazy that one Kendall Square landlord even jokingly quoted a $100 a square foot rent to a broker.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see that number continue to climb,” said Paul Delaney of Cresa Boston, adding “each new lease commands a higher asking price.”

Of course, $80 a square foot is not the average rent for Kendall Square, but rather the high end of the asking price for blocks of office space in some of the neighborhood’s top addresses.

Greater Boston’s increasingly crowded luxury apartment market is poised to go bust in what has been the ultimate, slow-motion train wreck.
A bewildering number of deluxe towers in Boston, Somerville, Medford and other construction hot spots are flooding the market with free rent deals and other goodies in a bid to find enough live bodies to fill their high-priced apartments.
Now rents are starting to fall in some key neighborhoods, even as developers get ready to roll out thousands of additional posh new units over the next few years.