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Rents are dropping for furniture market showroom space in High Point.

In some cases, all the way to nothing.

Lisa Shankle understands the business. The leasing and property manager for Hamilton Properties in the market's design district, she's been in it for years.

But she's never seen this.

Shankle complained to the High Point Enterprise last week that the International Home Furnishings Center, the market's 3.5-million-square-foot "Big Building," lured two of her tenants with offers of free rent for 15 months and other incentives.

Not a problem, except they were still under lease for 42,000 square feet in her building.

Shankle made a counter-offer, she told me Monday, but couldn't go low enough.

If the lease was valid, Hamilton Properties will get paid. Business is business. When it comes down to essentials, market showrooms are independent businesses in competition with each other.

"It's always been that way," a veteran insider told me. He didn't want his name used in an article.

Yet, it hasn't always been that way.

"It's a different day, a different environment," Shankle said.

"I hate this is happening," said Ann Pickering, leasing manager for 200 Steele, a showroom building for upscale manufacturers. "It's not what High Point was about."

She hasn't lost any tenants to the IHFC's pitch "that I know of," she said.

Exhibitors are fair game when their leases expire, Shankle and Pickering agree. Neither would try to lure a tenant from another building before then.

"Definitely not," Pickering said, calling the tactic "underhanded."

"It's unethical," Shankle said.

Tom Mitchell, the Big Building's CEO, didn't return my call Monday. I did speak with Brian Casey, president of the High Point Market Authority, and coaxed him to weigh in ... carefully.

"Economic pressures unlike any we've ever seen cause people to act sometimes a little differently," he said. "It's not the kind of activity you like to see."

Absolutely not. The High Point market is stronger when it shows some unity.

The authority, however, belying its name, doesn't have the authority to police leasing contracts or settle disputes between showroom owners. It provides promotional, logistics and other services for the market. Several showroom managers, including Mitchell, serve on its board.

What's happening is as simple as supply and demand. The furniture industry has experienced severe contraction. Companies are going out of business. Sales are plummeting. Market attendance has dipped, and the demand for showroom space has fallen. There are no figures, but by some estimates 10 percent of showroom space is vacant. That number "wouldn't surprise me," Casey said.

It's not just High Point. Observers say the World Market Center in Las Vegas is far from fully leased, too.

This puts downward pressure on prices. The IHFC, with possibly the market's deepest pockets, can afford to offer some exhibitors a deal that's hard to refuse.

The giveaway is smart if it keeps more showroom space occupied, which pulls more buyers into the building. The tenants who pay benefit, too.

Not everyone can match that kind of offer, or wants to.

"You have to make some concessions," Pickering said. "But you have to draw the line someplace."

For exhibitors, falling rent rates may be a saving grace -- like low gas prices for motorists when everything else is going bad.

For showroom owners, who have made large initial investments and carry high overhead costs, the trend is dangerous.

But it's not panic time.

"High Point is strong," Shankle said. The markets are still "heavily attended." She knows of "a lot of overseas companies that are very interested in High Point."

The Market Authority, too, aggressively targets foreign companies, as well as designers, accessories makers and others that never have come to High Point before. Even though overall attendance slipped in October, Casey said, there were still more than 8,000 first-time visitors. April's market will be supported by the U.S. Commerce Department's international buyer program.

If all that still leaves empty showroom space -- and some insiders believe the market overbuilt in better times -- new approaches will be needed. Like mixed-use, an idea once abhorred by market purists. But why not push more retail, restaurants, bars and housing into the heart of the furniture district?

Free rent, anyone?