Five years of tightening in Oahu’s warehouse property market has stopped, at least for a moment, according to a report released for publication today.

Commercial real estate firm Colliers International said in the report that 60,504 square feet of empty industrial building space was added to available inventory on Oahu in the first half of this year.

The increase, Colliers said, was the first since 2012.

The added vacancies were mainly created by several spaces of 10,000 to 20,000 square feet in Kalihi becoming available, the report said.

As a result, the islandwide vacancy rate for warehouse space rose to 1.75 percent at the end of June from 1.6 percent at the end of last year.

However, Colliers said demand should continue to far outstrip the supply of leasable warehouse space and therefore keep competition among businesses high — especially for higher-quality spaces — and position landlords to seek higher rents.

“This quarter saw a marginally higher vacancy rate along with a slight increase in the number of available industrial listings; however, we are still in a very difficult market for tenants seeking to expand or relocate,” Ronald Ward, a Colliers vice president, said in the report.

A vacancy rate under 2 percent represents an extremely limited supply and represents 699,039 square feet available out of 40 million square feet of space spread over 1,807 buildings. The 60,504 square feet of available space added to the market is a little less than half the size of a Hawaii Costco store.

Colliers said that despite the small uptick in warehouse vacancies, landlords with space to rent are asking a little more on average. The weighted average rent for available space was $1.24 per square foot per month in the second quarter. That was a nine-year high and up 2.5 percent from $1.21 at the end of last year. Colliers forecasts that average asking rent by the end of this year will be close to $1.30.