There was no summer slowdown for Manhattan's office market, where available space is rapidly dwindling, rents are soaring and Midtown has hit a key milestone.
:quality(75))
The amount of available office space in Midtown fell to 27.7M SF by the end of the third quarter, matching the figure from March 2020, according to a new Colliers report. It's the first NYC submarket to recover all of the occupancy losses caused by the pandemic.
More than 10M SF of leases were signed across the borough, keeping Manhattan's office market on pace for its most active year since 2000.
The tightening market has allowed owners of Class-A buildings across the borough to push asking rents to an all-time high of $85.45 per SF, according to Colliers.
“The Manhattan office market’s recovery continued at a rapid pace throughout the summer and into the early days of autumn,” Colliers Executive Managing Director of Research and Business Development Franklin Wallach said in a statement.
Midtown’s availability rate dwindled to 11.9%, while its average asking rent is now $85.08 per SF, up 5.4% year-over-year — the fastest annual Q3 jump since 2014. Proskauer Rose signed the biggest deal of the quarter at 11 Times Square with its 478K SF expansion.
“Rents are rising across the board,” SL Green Director of Leasing Steven Durels said at the Bank of America Global CEO Real Estate Conference last month. “They're not limited to just the high-end part of the market.”
It was also a record-breaking period in the tech hub of Midtown South. Powered by Anthropic’s bumper 466K SF full-building lease at 330 Hudson St., the 4.8M SF of leasing activity was the most for a third quarter on record, according to Colliers.
Artificial intelligence firms took nearly 1.1M SF of Manhattan office space, continuing their expansion after taking 800K SF in Q2 and 790K SF in all of 2025.
Downtown, by contrast, lost momentum last quarter, with 850K SF of leases signed — 21.7% below its quarterly average over the past five years.
But that didn’t detract from Manhattan’s momentum: The overall availability rate shrank by 2.4% between July and October, ending the quarter at 12.4%, according to the brokerage’s data.
The scramble for space has put the city’s office landlords firmly in the driver’s seat, with robust tenant demand and buildings being converted to apartments putting an end to the yearslong rise in tenant concessions.
“As we enter the final quarter of the year, the market is beginning a new chapter after achieving several critical recovery milestones,” Wallach said.
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)