Asking rents in the Manhattan office leasing market continued to rise in January while vacancy rates tightened, even as total activity appeared to slow from last year’s overall brisk pace, data from commercial services firm Cassidy Turley shows.

“It certainly seems slower than normal, but some major deals were done,” Robert Sammons, vice president for research at Cassidy Turley, said. [more]

From left: Marc Packman of Trinity Real Estate and 200 Hudson Street

Midtown South, which already has the lowest vacancy rate of any market in the country for office space, is nurturing a hub for New York City’s tenants du jour — the creative class — and the rents look almost pre-recession there.

The Hudson Square submarket — which runs from Canal to 14th streets, and from Sixth Avenue to the Hudson River — saw the largest decline in vacancy rate and the biggest spike in asking rents of any neighborhood in Midtown South year-over-year, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s fourth-quarter numbers, unveiled at a media breakfast yesterday. [more]

Manhattan office leasing activity hit its highest level since 2000, with tenants signing new deals for more than 30 million square feet, executives at commercial firm Cushman & Wakefield said this morning at the company’s quarterly media briefing in Midtown.

Only four months ago, as the velocity of office leasing slowed in the third quarter, there were “warning signs,” that the market, while healthy, might weaken, said  Joseph Harbert, COO of Cushman’s New York metro region, during the third-quarter market briefing. But instead, it improved in the fourth quarter. [more]

From the January issue: The Manhattan office leasing market started 2011 with a bang of big leasing deals, driving down availability rates significantly. It’s not expected to perform quite as well in early 2012, but real estate professionals do view the year ahead in a positive light.

Bruce Mosler, chairman of global brokerage at Cushman & Wakefield, said he does not expect much in the way of blockbuster deals in the first part of this year. That continues a trend that started in the second half of 2011 in which relatively smaller deals — less than 100,000 square feet — took a greater share of the market. [more]