Rupert Murdoch and 1211 Sixth Ave.

From the April issue: The 44-story tower at 1211 Sixth Avenue, home to Rupert Murdoch’s global media company News Corporation, is getting a major new tenant. Axis Re, a division of Axis Capital, the large Bermuda-based reinsurance company, signed a lease to move to 121,019 square feet on floors 24 through 26, data from CoStar Group shows. The asking rent for the three floors at the 1.8 million-square-foot tower, which is located between 47th and 48th streets, was $65 per square foot, leasing data website MrOfficeSpace.com shows. That price was a bit above the overall asking rent in Midtown, which in February was $57.97 per square foot, CBRE figures show. Click here to see the commercial market report in the April issue for more on the latest office trends.

Source: Cassidy Turley

Manhattan office vacancy rate climbed in January, according to Cassidy Turley’s monthly market report, reaching 12.2 percent. This 20-basis-point climb, according to the report, is due in part to two major chunks of office real estate to hit the market last month: a 612,000-square-foot space formerly occupied by Pfizer at 685 Third Avenue between 43rd and 44th streets, and a 250,000-square-foot space at 1745 Broadway on the corner of 56th Street. The average asking rent, however, saw a slight month-over-month increase, reaching $48.12 per square foot from $47.66. TRD [more]

Overall asking rent for Manhattan office space climbed slightly to $47.73 per square foot in August, from $47.57 per square foot in July, according to CB Richard Ellis’ latest market report. The vacancy rate in Manhattan also showed modest improvement, dropping gradually month-over-month to 13.4 percent, from 13.7 percent. Compared to August 2009, vacancy was down .5 percent. Of the borough’s prime office neighborhoods, the Downtown market struggled the most, showing its slowest leasing momentum since September 2009, as the vacancy rate remained steady at 14.3 percent. Midtown, however, showed promise: 10.55 million square feet has been leased so far this year, up 56 percent from the same time period last year. TRD

[more]

Downtown office vacancy chart, click image for larger version (source: Cassidy Turley)

The vacancy rate for Downtown surpassed the vacancy rate for Midtown
for the first time in nearly two years as several large blocks of
space were returned to the market in Lower Manhatt [more]

The Manhattan office market is much healthier than it was a year ago, according to a CB Richard Ellis market report released today. The report, which measures 2010 market activity up until May 1, showed that 6.75 million square feet of office space has been leased so far this year, compared to the same time period in 2009 when 3.45 million square feet had been leased. [more]

Source: Jones Lang LaSalle

The overall office leasing market remained flat in Manhattan last month with Class A properties showing the most improvement and Class B properties continuing to lag, according to a new report covering April from commercial firm Jones Lang LaSalle (click here to see full report).

Asking rents in Class A properties rose in six of eight submarkets in Midtown and Downtown while Class B rates dropped in five of those eight areas, the report shows.

The uptick in asking rents in select submarkets is a sign of market stabilization, company vice president of research James Delmonte said, but not of a sustained period of rent increases. [more]

Manhattan office asking rents fell by their largest amount in four months in March even as leasing volume increased, according to data from commercial services firm CB Richard Ellis.

Average asking rents fell by 51 cents per foot in March to $48.27 per square foot, the steepest decline since rents fell by 73 cents in November 2009 to $49.17 per foot, CBRE data shows.

Over the previous three months, the average asking rent in the market fell by an average of only 14 cents per foot. The flattening in the decline in rents was seen as an indicator of stability in pricing.

Matthew Van Buren, executive vice president at CBRE, said the fluctuations in asking rent may just be individual large deals swaying the market. [more]

The Manhattan office market is on its way up, according to a recent investment report from CB Richard Ellis, which projects across-the-board improvements in office investment sales through the end of the year. The report, which cites early-2010 data, says there are market indicators to suggest a rebound. Despite the lengths the market may have to go to a rebound — the report shows that sales volume dropped 91 percent between 2008 and 2009 — CBRE says that investor attitude is changing for the better. “Investors believe that rents are stabilizing,” the report says, noting that February’s average asking rent of $48.78 per square foot is widely thought of as the market bottom, from July 2008′s peak of $71.92 per square foot. In the broader metro area, CBRE says that prices will continue to climb, spurring more investment sales. “By year-end 2010, CBRE econometric advisors forecasts that average New York City metro office rents will increase by 2.2 percent compared to year-end 2009,” the report says. TRD

CB Richard Ellis’ most recent monthly Manhattan Marketviews report showed disparate office leasing activity in three of the borough’s main office corridors: Midtown, Midtown South and Downtown. Midtown South had “robust leasing activity in February,” according to the report, with 410,000 square feet leased, marking 46 percent more leased space than the five-year monthly average recorded by CBRE. And while the average rent per square foot in the area stayed relatively flat, climbing just 5 cents month-over-month, the overage leasing volume had a positive effect on the area’s office market. Downtown, however, was not so encouraging. The neighborhood saw just 210,000 square feet of leased space, down 46 percent from the five-year monthly average of 390,000 square feet. Midtown, meanwhile, “had a stable month in February,” the report says, falling short of the monthly average by about 29 percent but showing strong gains over the same time period a year earlier. TRD

While there was little or no change in asking rents in Midtown and Midtown South last month, Downtown saw a moderate drop after landlords cut prices in anticipation of higher vacancy rates in the coming months, a new Manhattan office leasing report covering February from commercial service firm Jones Lang LaSalle shows.

The average asking rents in Midtown did not change from January, at $59.43 per square foot, while in Midtown South, the average asking rents rose by 3 cents from the prior month to $43.79 per foot, JLL reported.

But Downtown, asking rents fell by 31 cents in February to $36.97 per square foot, the data show.

James Delmonte, a JLL vice president and director of research, said that for Manhattan, overall pricing has flattened compared to the steep drops seen last year, but Downtown asking rents dipped as landlords expected more available space to be put on the market.

“There are adjustments in pricing ahead of [an] anticipated continued rise in vacancy rates,” he said. [more]