Two sectors of Oahu’s commercial real estate market — warehouse and office property — may have begun to recover from five years of depression, based on leasing activity during the first half of this year.

Commercial real estate firm Colliers International measured occupancy rates for the two types of space on Oahu and reported significant improvement in both sectors.

The industrial warehouse market had vacant space reduced by 201,191 square feet during the first six months of the year. That put the vacancy rate at 4.2 percent, down from 4.8 percent at the end of last year.

"The recovery is finally manifesting itself," Scott Mitchell, a Colliers executive vice president and industrial real estate broker, said in the report.

Oahu’s warehouse leasing market had bulged with vacant space — an additional 1 million square feet — over the past five years, though 2010 and 2011 were close to flat.

At the end of last year, Colliers predicted that warehouse vacancies wold rise this year to 5 percent or 5.25 percent. But the firm now anticipates that the market is strengthening and will drop the vacancy rate to below 4 percent next year.

"The return of positive occupancy gains, rising economic indicators and strengthening rental rates leads us to believe that the market has now entered the recovery phase," the report said.

Colliers said record tourism is helping boost retail business that in turn benefits wholesalers that are big warehouse users. The construction industry, another big warehouse user, is showing signs of recovery that should help reduce vacancies, the report said.

The Colliers report is based on data from 39 million square feet of warehouse space. The 4.2 percent vacancy rate equates to almost 1.7 million square feet of empty space.

In the office sector, Colliers is more skeptical about whether a recovery is underway.

Office vacancies on Oahu were pretty much flat during the first half of this year, edging higher by only 376 square feet. That followed five years of significantly rising vacancies, including 137,361 square feet last year and 227,177 square feet the year before.

"Whether this is the beginning of change in the marketplace is still up for speculation," the report said. "While it is wishful to believe that change is occurring, we remain skeptical that this second positive quarter reflects an overall trend."

Colliers predicts that the second half of this year will see more office space vacated than filled, and that vacancies won’t decrease until next year.

The firm said that job growth, which increased almost 1 percent in Hawaii last year, has remained elusive in some sectors that fuel demand for office space.

The vacancy rate for office space at the end of June was 13.6 percent, representing 2 million square feet of vacant space out of 14.6 million square feet tracked by Colliers. At the end of last year, Colliers said the vacancy rate was 13 percent, which was lower because its survey included the same amount of vacant space but an additional 1 million square feet of total space.