C&W: 2012 Leasing Will Be Hot

NEW YORK CITY-Cushman & Wakefield reported a very strong year, with intriguing Manhattan office leasing activity and low vacancy rates – two of the many factors prompting Joe Harbert, chief operating officer of C&W New York Metro Region, to state, if a touch carefully, “If we continue at the pace from the last half of the last year into 2012, we’re going to have a good year.”

According to Harbert, 2011 was an “extremely strong leasing year” and saw 51 office deals over 100,000 square feet. He explains that 29 of these were new deals and 22 were renewals. This activity pushed the year-over-year leasing rate to just over 16% from 2010. A “strong component of the local economy,” financial service companies, were responsible for 29.7% percent of these new deals, while media and information leased 25.3%, prompting Harbert to describe the sector as “on fire” last year.