A survey released Thursday by UCLA Anderson Forecast economists finds increasing optimism among commercial real estate investors, despite a belief that the state’s struggling office and industrial markets will not hit a turning point until next year.

The Allen Matkins/UCLA Anderson Forecast Commercial Real Estate Survey and Index said the optimism is strongest for the San Francisco Bay Area. Even so, the index for Los Angeles and Orange counties is still at its highest level since the survey began in 2007.

The consensus of those surveyed was that by the middle of this year, absorption of excess office space currently on the market will accelerate. “This suggests that something closer to 12 percent rather than 20 percent vacancy rates is in the not too distant future,” said the survey, which did not specify how many investors were surveyed. “In short, the story for the Los Angeles … is that the current malaise is playing itself out.”

The office vacancy rate in Los Angeles County was 17 percent in the fourth quarter, unchanged from the previous quarter, the Business Journal reported in its Jan. 24 issue.

“A recovery in commercial real estate always lags a recovery in the rest of the economy so what we are observing is typical in this part of the business cycle,” said Jerry Nickelsburg, Anderson Forecast senior economist. “After 18 months of pessimism about office and industrial markets we have now seen six months of optimism.”

Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis LLP, a 220- attorney law firm with offices Los Angeles and several other California cities, began sponsoring the twice-a-year survey in an effort to improve the quality of forecasts of commercial real estate.