Fifth Avenue is the 2nd priciest US office market: report

Office Rents On Fifth Avenue are the second-most expensive in the country, according to a new report from JLL.

Average asking rents on the Midtown stretch between 50th and 61st streets clocked in at $116.04 per square foot, and at the top end of the range reached $185 per square foot, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“When you think about Fifth Avenue buildings, they’re comprised of a subset that are all proximate to the park [Central Park] and have stellar park views,” Mo Beler, a managing director at JLL, told the newspaper.

California’s Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park came in as the most expensive at an average asking price of $119.38 per square foot, according to JLL’s 2017 Most Expensive Streets report.

Fifth Avenue – home to premiere office addresses like the General Motors Building at 767 Fifth Avenue, 9 West 57th Street and 745 Fifth Avenue – had a vacancy rate during the third quarter of 11.9 percent, according to JLL. That’s higher than the overall rate for Manhattan of 10.2 percent, but Beler said the roughly 2 percent difference is normal as longtime owners can afford to keep space vacant in order to wait for high-paying tenants.

Still, Fifth Avenue and Midtown in general are facing competition as tenants flock to places like the Far West Side. Worldwide, Midtown ranks as the globe’s fourth-most expensive office market, with Hong Kong taking the top spot. [WSJ] – Rich Bockmann