Reports: Office Keeps Trending Downward

NEW YORK CITY-Manhattan’s class A office vacancy rate is its highest in three years, according to a new report from Colliers ABR, while Newmark Knight Frank says the borough’s availability rate is the highest since late 2005. A slightly earlier nationwide office forecast from NKF says improvement in the pace of business won’t come earlier than the second half of 2009.

The Colliers report, issued on Tuesday, says that Manhattan’s class A vacancy rate climbed 70 basis points to 8.7% in November, the highest since the 9% figure recorded for September ’05. In Midtown, the vacancy rate reached 9.3% in November, up from 8.5% in October and the highest since the 9.8% of August 2004, according to Colliers. Availability was up in all six Midtown submarkets, with the Plaza district crossing the 10% threshold for the first time since January ’05.

Midtown South’s availability rate increased at a lesser rate, up one percentage point to 9.5% with 175,225 square feet added back to the market. More than one-third of the 2,710,711 square feet added back to the Downtown market YTD occurred in November, with 1.11 million square feet of negative net absorption during the month.