Office Rebound Keeps Up the Pace

NEW YORK CITY-Office leasing and investment sales year to date are up sharply across Manhattan, by 65.8% and 168%, respectively, Cushman & Wakefield said Tuesday in its third-quarter overview report. Similarly, Jones Lang LaSalle’s James Delmonte says in a release, “Manhattan is on target to end the year with positive absorption for the first time since 2007.” However, not everything’s trending upward: asking rents are continuing to decline, albeit more gradually, and here as elsewhere, more job growth will be needed to keep the momentum going long-term.

At 18.8 million square feet, 2010’s year-to-date office leasing volume in Manhattan is already ahead of the 2009 total of 16.3 million square feet. It’s even farther ahead of the ’09 YTD tally: 12.6 million square feet. During C&W’s quarterly media briefing Tuesday morning, Joseph Harbert, COO of the New York metro region, observed that the last time the market saw two consecutive quarters of more than six million square feet was in 2007.