Fairfield and Westchester counties see an uptick in commercial leasing activity in Q3, report finds

Fairfield County’s leasing activity showed a “vote of confidence” for the area, according to a new report. Leasing in the county “reached its highest point since the end of 2016 — hitting 980,000 square feet of leasing activity,” according to CBRE’s third quarter Westchester/Fairfield County office market reports. Leasing isn’t doing poorly in Westchester County either, where activity “moderately improved from last quarter,” the report says. Westchester County also experienced “the highest volume of new leasing since [the second quarter of 2017].” One factor that helped improve conditions was the former IBM campus in Somers being pulled off the market amid plans to turn it into a STEM-centric high school. “Removing the IBM campus from the market had a huge impact on the county’s availability rate and its absorption — Westchester County’s accumulated negative absorption was erased when this property was pulled from the market,” CBRE’s William V. Cuddy Jr. said. [CBRE Fairfield, Westchester]