Fairfield County office leasing down nearly 30% from last year, while Westchester sees an uptick

Financial data and software company FactSet signed Fairfield County’s top office lease transaction of 2018, taking around 173,000 square feet of space at 45 Glover Avenue in Norwalk, according to Newmark Knight Frank’s fourth quarter office market report. Leasing activity in the county last year was down by 29 percent from 2017 “due to a shortage of large deals,” but smaller deals “grew significantly” in 2018, according to the report. Meanwhile, Westchester County’s office market saw around 500,000 square feet of leasing activity during the fourth quarter of 2018 — a 17.3 percent increase from the same time in 2017, per NKF’s most recent localized office market report. Fuji Photo Film USA had the top lease transaction in Westchester last year, the report said, with a renewal and expansion of a 122,119-square-foot lease at 200 Summit Lake Drive in Valhalla. CBRE found that office leasing activity in Fairfield was the highest it has been since 2015, ending 2018 with 2.6 million square feet of activity. Westchester’s office market also had its strongest quarter since mid-2017, according to CBRE, but annual leasing continued to diminish with just 907,000 square feet of activity at year-end, the lowest total in 10 years. [CBRE, NKF]