Fairfield County’s office market has best first half since 2015, says new report

The office market in Fairfield County may have had its lowest quarter for leasing activity since the first quarter of 2013, with 308,000 square feet of new leases signed, but that was still good enough for its “best first half of the year since 2015,” according to CBRE’s second quarter report. Class A space made up 77 percent of all of Fairfield County’s new leases during the last quarter, and new ventures comprised 34 percent of new leasing activity, per CBRE data. Average asking rents, meanwhile, rose by a mere $0.06 — to $35.35 per square foot — between the first and second quarters of 2019. “[W]e are seeing more media and production companies lease space, which we expect to continue into the second half of the year,” said a statement from CBRE executive vice president Tom Pajolek. Jim Fagan, a managing principal at Cushman & Wakefield, told the Daily Voice Plus that Fairfield County will likely see a drop in vacancies during the next few months as large corporate tenants move into newly-leased space. A Cushman & Wakefield market report found that Stamford accounted for 58.1 percent of all demand in Fairfield County during the second quarter. [DVP]