As a result, available vacancies were lower than at any stage Andrew McDonald could recall in about a decade.

The director of Andrew McDonald Commercial Dubbo said while retail and office activity probably had not been "quite as positive", there were signs of turnaround with some recent lettings in the city's main street.

The leasing activity in the industrial sphere included a mixture of smaller businesses, "either getting established or relocating", as well as a couple of larger businesses, Mr McDonald said.

On the retail front, leasing of two Riverdale Shopping Centre tenancies was under way, he said.

One of the premises was occupied by Subway until earlier this year.

At 131 Macquarie Street, opposite Myer, the 'leased' signs had also gone up, with the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) the new tenant, he said.

The long-time realtor said leasing activity had been "surprisingly strong" for the past five or six months.

"Not quite sure the reasoning to that, but we've had above-average levels of leasing activity, more so on the industrial front than the office and retail front," he said.

"We are hearing that tradespeople and anything that's of an industrial flavour has continued and been busy throughout the course of this year, so that's good news, and hopefully that's the case for most of those types of businesses."

Against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, Mr McDonald said no one was "being complacent".

"...we are mindful, it's been well-documented about things like JobKeeper now ceasing for quite a few businesses," he said.

"So we've still got a nervous four or five or six months in front of us as to what impact that has and of course, the health authorities are yet to find the magic vaccine that's going to help things as well, so all of those sorts of things have still got a little bit of time to play out.

"However, the general commentary I'm getting from business people and some of the people we're dealing with on these properties... is there's certainly optimism in Dubbo and the surrounding areas.

"Helped of course by the magnificent crops in areas around, so that's given some reason for some hope and confidence, but even in the case of the cropping there's a nervous wait because now we could end up with too much rain, just when we don't need it.

"So we need them to be able to get those crops off safely and quickly and not have yields impacted too adversely, but all of that is good for the local economy."

Mr McDonald said the most exciting thing at the moment that was obvious was activity on the ex-RAAF site.

"It's great seeing activity under way there," he said.

"We've had discussions with the developers there about some of the types of development that might be undertaken there."

In sales, there was a "good response" to calls for expressions of interest in 2 Monash Street, a 13,540-square-metre site with Mitchell Highway frontage, he said.

"We ended up with five submissions to consider, and one of those we're working with at the moment with a view to hopefully exchanging contracts in the next week or so," he said.

The RFDS reports the leased space in Macquarie Street is for a mental health and wellbeing space run by the RFDS in Dubbo.

It will be a base for its Dubbo clients and also a base for its outreach teams to work from, and will open in en in two to three weeks.