A report on the subject from Cushman and Wakefield has shown that 7.5 million sq ft of New York office space was newly leased across Manhattan during the final quarter of 2010, while 26.3 million sq ft was freshly occupied over the year as a whole.
The figures mean 61.4 per cent more new office space leasing deals were agreed in Manhattan during 2010 than was the case in the previous 12 months and that the most recent quarter saw the highest level of activity in a three-month period since Q3 2006.
Analysts at the commercial property firm have welcomed their own findings as an “incredible and heartening uptick in activity” that shows demand for available office space in Manhattan has well and truly rebounded after a difficult period.
“With limited new construction and modest improvements in employment in New York City, this leasing activity has produced the first clear signs that fundamentals are now on the mend,” reckoned Joseph R Harbert, Cushman and Wakefield’s chief operating officer in central New York.
Each of the three major areas of Manhattan, namely Downtown, Midtown and Midtown South, all saw their office space vacancy rates decline considerably last year, with financial service companies accounting for nearly a third of new office occupations in 2010.
Meanwhile, a report from another prominent commercial real estate analyst company Colliers International recently suggested that demand for high-quality available office space in Manhattan would increase sharply over the course of 2011.
Editor’s notes: In 2022, the total year take-up of office space through leasing in Manhattan was 29.11 million square feet which was higher than the 2010 figure, and also higher than 2021’s figure of 24.96 million square feet, however, it was 12 per cent lower than the ten-year average of 33.09 million square feet of office space.
Of note was the performance towards the end of the year – office leasing declined by 46.5 per cent during Q4 2022 to 4.94 million square feet. This was the sharpest quarterly drop in demand since Q2 2020. It was also lower than the figure for Q4 2010.
Global economic uncertainties as well as mass layoffs across the technology and other industries put pressure on the majority of major city office space markets from the Summer of 2022.
And, in the first quarter of 2023, New York City office vacancy rates rose to 16.1 per cent representing 76 million square feet of office space unleased.