"I had a general rule in my buildings that if I'm giving a build-out, I'm not giving concessions, because here I am spending $30 or $40 per sf for this particular tenant already. He shouldn't need two, three, four months of free rent. He's already getting a lot from us as a landlord. For the last few deals we had to give one or two months of concessions, but we deferred it to later in the first year or early in the second year of tenancy.

"I don't know if I'm being indicative of the rest of the market, but in our buildings in Midtown South, I'm giving one or two months free on a build-out. If somebody is taking the building as is, I'll give four months free, but that's always spread out. I'll never make it the first four months of the deal. If it's a renewal, if they're going to pay market rent, I'll give them one or two months free, and that's it.

"Right now the Midtown South market is very strong, there's not a lot of vacancy even with all the bad news in the market. You can really hold strong. I caution against saying that this is the prevailing feeling on concessions in Manhattan or in Midtown Manhattan.

"I would say that in 2002 and 2003 it was really worse than than it is now. Back then there were very big concession packages out in the market. I knew of other landlords building space for $50 per sf, and giving six months free rent. We're not quite there, but I certainly see that with just about every offer we get now, they ask for and push the envelope on concessions.

"There's still not enough space out there for tenants to be in power. To give you an idea, our buildings in Midtown South are probably 95% leased; in the last six months we leased about 50,000 sf. So the market is still strong if you have good product. If you have a nice building with good services, there are plenty of tenants that want to come to these types of buildings."