From left: Empire State Building, 30 Rockefeller Center and 120 Park Avenue

New York City office rentals got more expensive in the first quarter of 2011, even as vacancy and absorption rates remained mostly unchanged, according to separate reports released today by Cassidy Turley and Colliers International. Li & Fung’s rental in the Empire State Building, Lazard and Deloitte signing for space in 30 Rockefeller Center and Bloomberg LP’s move to 120 Park Avenue steered the strong market. The average asking rent in Manhattan rose to $50.18 per square foot from $48.62 per square foot, highlighted by a $2.14-per-square-foot jump in Midtown North, according to Colliers. The firm reported an availability rate of 11.7 percent, down 0.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010, and just 300,000 square feet of net absorption. TRD [more]

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]

With asking rents still far below the peaks of 2008, Manhattan office tenants leased up new space at the fastest clip in over four years, a new report covering the fourth quarter from commercial services firm Cushman & Wakefield says. Businesses inked 7.5 million square feet of new office space in the fourth quarter, the most since the third quarter of 2006, and 50 percent higher than the 5 million square feet leased in final quarter of 2009. For the full year, commercial firms leased 26.3 million square feet, up 61 percent from 2009, when companies took 16.3 million square feet. [more]

New York City’s multi-family and office real estate markets have the best outlook of all major metropolitan regions in the U.S., according to commercial real estate services firm Grubb & Ellis, which released its 2011-2015 real estate outlook report yesterday. The city’s retail real estate market, meanwhile, ranked third behind Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. Nationwide, Robert Bach, a chief economist with Grubb & Ellis, said that 2010′s better-than-expected performance will help spur recovery in 2011. TRD [more]

Office tenants in Midtown leased more space in November than in any month since the middle of 2006 as new office leasing rang in at double the monthly average, a new report covering all firms’ deals released today by commercial firm CB Richard Ellis shows.

“The month’s robust leasing activity — the largest single-month total since June 2006 — was achieved by deals of all sizes across the entire market,” the Midtown report says.

Tenants struck relocation or expansion deals for more than 2.4 million square feet in Midtown, compared with 1.2 million square feet the month before. TRD [more]

Dumbo is quickly becoming New York City’s “Silicon Beach,” according to Fortune magazine, which ranked the six “hottest” tech companies that have blossomed in the neighborhood, in a list that heralds the neighborhood as an up-and-coming tech center. Companies like digital ad agency Big Spaceship and Etsy, a popular online “hobbypreneur” site, are among the “hot” digital companies named in the neighborhood. [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]

New York City office buildings have failed to keep up with the green trend, according to a study from IBM released today, which surveyed 6,486 office workers in 16 cities across the country, and it may be costing their tenants big bucks. While Los Angeles nabbed high marks for its offices’ high energy efficiency, New York City was rated “average” in terms of how it conserves resources in the workplace. [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 vacancy rate Downtown rose sharply as Goldman Sachs’ former headquarters building, the 1.1 million-square-foot tower at 85 Broad Street, was officially added as available to the leasing market, commercial services firm Cassidy Turley said in its monthly Manhattan office leasing report released today (click here to see full report).

The vacancy rate Downtown rose by more than a percentage point to 12.2 percent in March from 11.1 percent in February because of the addition, the report says.

The building also drove Manhattan’s Class A vacancy rate to its highest level in 13 years, the report says, reaching 12.8 percent in March. TRD [more]