The Real Deal New York

From the February issue: Asking rent reductions that accelerated through the fourth quarter of 2008 continued in January, with prices down by as much as 30 percent from the peak last summer, commercial brokers said. The number of blocks of space in Midtown with dramatic price cuts quadrupled between September and December, according to a CB Richard Ellis report released last month. Tenant representative broker Norman Bobrow said he saw repricing all over Manhattan. “This has been going on since September of last year but has accelerated, really accelerated, in December and January,” he said. He estimated prices had fallen back to levels last seen in 2005. The optimism from the inauguration of President Barack Obama on January 20 was quickly dampened two days later by a crushing jobs report that showed the city shed 8,500 private jobs in December and the unemployment rate rose to 7.4 percent, Glenn Markman, executive director at Cushman & Wakefield, said. Each office job loss equates to a loss in demand for about 250 square feet. Despite the bad news, leasing negotiations have picked up from the near standstill in the fourth quarter of 2008.