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]

From left: Andrew Peretz, Barry Ritholtz, Eric Anton and Lawrence Yun

Many make a profession of foreseeing the future: meteorologists and fortune-tellers, among others. But there are few harder industries to predict than real estate, even for market experts. And after 2009′s battering, few ventured a guess on 2010′s outcome. As The Real Deal‘s Editor-in-Chief Stuart Elliott noted in January 2010, “if we were to turn a corner, we wouldn’t know it until we did.” But, as we did last year, The Real Deal has looked at the most noteworthy predictions of the year to determine just how right — or wrong — those forecasts were…. [more]

From left: Stephen Siegel and Matthew Van Buren, both of CBRE

A day after a Cushman & Wakefield broker said at a quarterly market briefing that the vacancy rate Downtown could rise by two-thirds, a top broker at competitor CB Richard Ellis gave a more optimistic view of the area during its own briefing today.

Stephen Siegel, chairman of global brokerage at commercial services firm CBRE, said many of the financial giants may not give back all the space once expected. He, along with executive managing director Matthew Van Buren, spoke this morning at the CBRE fourth-quarter market briefing at the firm’s Midtown office.

“I also believe with the exception of 85 Broad [Street], Goldman Sachs will probably retain a lot more space than they were anticipated to, maybe 1 New York Plaza, etc.,” he said. “I think Merrill [Lynch] will stay. If not with all their space then with a significant amount of their space. That is my opinion.”

Although he would not identify Goldman Sachs by name, he suggested in another instance that the firm had removed from the market 260,000 square feet previously offered for sublet at 1 Liberty Plaza, and once again utilized that space. … [more]

The long-expected return of unneeded office space to the Downtown market by large financial firms may push vacancy rates up by two-thirds, a Cushman & Wakefield expert in the market said today.

Andrew Peretz, executive director at commercial services firm Cushman & Wakefield, predicted the vacancy rate, now at 9.6 percent Downtown, could reach 15.75 percent, a jump of 64 percent.

That increase in the vacancy rate would drive down prices, he said.

“I do think there will be a decrease in asking rents over the next two or three quarters,” Peretz said. He was speaking this morning at the firm’s fourth-quarter market briefing at the company’s Midtown headquarters.

For Manhattan overall, the situation was not as bleak, although prices may not rise for more than a year and a half, Cushman & Wakefield COO Joseph Harbert said at the same event…. [more]