CALGARY - CBRE says Calgary's downtown office space got a little less empty in the last quarter for the first time since the sector was gutted by the oil patch downturn.

The commercial realtor says the vacancy rate dropped by 30 basis points to 27.4 per cent in the three months to the end of September, the first dip since the same quarter back in 2014 before the downturn hit.

The 10,600 square metres of positive absorption in Calgary still left the city with close to 1.1 million square metres of empty downtown office space, accounting for about 40 per cent of the empty downtown office space across Canada's 10 largest cities.

The city's downtown vacancy rate is also still by far the worst of any major Canadian city, with the national average hovering at about 11 per cent, while Toronto's sits at four per cent and Vancouver at five per cent.

There are other cities hit by high downtown office vacancies as well, though, with London, Ont., sitting at 21.5 per cent, Edmonton at 20.3 per cent, and Halifax at 16 per cent.

Calgary's office market was hit by a combination of widespread layoffs in the oil and gas industry after the price of crude plunged, and overbuilding of office space during the boom years.