View Offices for Rent in Manhattan
In what was described as a “solid” year for office space markets in the heart of New York City, downtown was the only sub-district in Manhattan to see a reduction in unused offices. C&W’s figures show the vacancy rate downtown falling from 9.5 per cent at the end of 2011 to 8.8 per cent a year later.
“Evolving demographics combined with the completion of the highest quality new product in the country have elevated downtown’s status to a ‘destination’ office market,” said Robert Constable, an executive director at C&W.
Meanwhile, the midtown Manhattan office renting market experienced a 0.7 per cent increase in its vacancy rates in 2012 but also saw a 3 per cent rise in average asking prices per square foot. At the end of the year, typical asking prices for renting Grade A offices in midtown Manhattan were up to $72.54 per square foot, according to C&W’s numbers.
Another C&W executive director, Andrew Sachs, commented on the midtown office market: “As the political and economic environment gains clarity, we will see the re-emergence of large corporate and financial service occupiers in the market in the second half of 2013.”
Taking Manhattan as a whole, the fourth quarter of 2012 saw 6.4 million square feet of office space newly leased, the highest level of the 12-month period. 23.2 million square feet were reportedly leased over the entire year.
Editor’s notes: In 2023, the total leasing activity for the year finished 6 per cent below 2022, at 27.25 million square feet. At the end of the year, the office availability rate was still at a record high and up 5 per cent over the previous year, with 96.5 million square feet of available space compared to the previous year’s total of 76 million square feet.
According to the NYC Comptroller’s report published in May 2024, New York City’s five boroughs comprise nearly 730 million square feet of office space of varying qualities, far greater than any other North American City. Los Angeles is second, with 432 million square feet, by comparison.
Manhattan’s office vacancy rate more than doubled from under 8 per cent at the start of the pandemic to 16 per cent as of April 30th, 2024, a level not seen since the early 1990s.
Asking office rents have fallen by 8 per cent since the onset of the pandemic, although this is a relatively mild drop compared to the 2008-09 recession (-33 per cent), the 2001-03 downturn (-25 per cent), and the 1990s slump (-35 per cent).
In Q4 2019, the average market asking rent in Manhattan was $69.78 per square foot per annum – in Q2 2024, it stood at $65.