Midtown South did a record 4.2M SF of office leases, excluding renewals, in 2013, but larger deals are slowing there. 2012 turned in five transactions between 100k SF and 249k (all relocations within the submarket), but last year, just one of that size occurred, says CBRE’s Peter Turchin (second from right, whom we snapped with colleagues Bruce Surry, Adam Foster, Kyle Schoppmann, and Shelly Cohen). Midtown, meanwhile, recorded zero 250k SF-plus deals in ’12 and two in ’13. 100k to 249k SF leases there went up from five to seven, and 50k to 100k SF deals rose from 20 to 35.
We snapped this of New York Harbor (doing an impression of Richard Scarry’s Busytown) from the 50th floor of 4 WTC, where CBRE hosted a media breakfast. Bruce says foreign buyers are still shopping Downtown (where 10% of the submarket, or 7.9M SF, sold last year). Fosun, for example, which bought One Chase Manhattan Plaza in October, isn’t done buying Downtown, he says. And some leases representing new-to-Downtown, international brand names likely will make news in Q1.
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