“We took advantage of that hot market as a buyer and a seller,” Holliday said. “As a seller, we announced three asset sales at the end of last year and we intend to accelerate our sales and JV efforts to capitalize on significant value creation and also our desire to continue to demonstrate the vast under-assessment of pride and market valuations by public market investors.”

The properties totaled a transaction value of close to $4.5 billion. “You can see on both sides of the table, we were active and we continue to be so in 2012,” Holliday said.

Notably, Holliday pointed out the recently-completed $252 million sale of the HarperCollins Building at 10 E. 53^rd St. as a key indicator for the year to come. “It fits right in with our core business model of acquiring, repositioning and redeveloping prime New York Midtown Manhattan assets,” he said. “We subsequently brought in a foreign joint venture partner to both leverage our equity, enhance our returns and increase our opportunity set. “

Holliday said the REIT is also seeing improved earnings velocity from two different avenues: improvements in same store GAAP NOI and contributions from recently acquired value-add properties. He said earnings and cash flow velocity would accelerate in 2012 as the company leases up the acquired vacancy in the New York market. The company ended 2011 with peak leasing volume of 662,000 square feet, led by Young & Rubicam’s 21-year, 340,000-square-foot deal at 3 Columbus Circle.

“While that market activity citywide may be slowing somewhat as reported by some of the New York brokers, our portfolio activity remains quite high, with over 115,000 square feet of space leased in our portfolio this month alone, and another 1.2 million square feet on top of that, which is being actively negotiated,” Holliday said.

An example of this recent performance at would be the lease signed last evening by Steve Durels and his leasing team at Jazz at Lincoln Center. The music organization is leasing approximately 30,000 square feet at 3 Columbus, bringing the total office left to lease at 170,000 square feet, Holliday said. “The building activity is accelerating on the heels of the Y&R announcement, and I feel safe to say that we will have less than 100,000 square feet to lease by year’s end at that property,” he said.

The leasing market remains in equilibrium at an overall 9.1% vacancy rate, but the REIT expects that number to improve modestly in 2012, with 24,000 private sector jobs estimated to be created in New York City in the coming year.

On the asset investment front, values continued to appreciate and cap rates continued to fall, as over $25 billion of sales were executed in 2011. Over half of that was represented by office sales, Holliday said. “Those were very significant volumes, not peak volumes, but quite sizable,” he said.