Overall, the 2019 year ended with 641 investment property sales that were above $5 billion in New York City, illustrating a drop in the ten-year average. However, there was still a strong performance in Manhattan as far as sales counted. In the fourth quarter, the office segment outshined other asset classes in the market, seeing a 17 percent increase in sales for a total of $5.2 billion in dollar volume for over 80 sales, according to Avison Young data.

Roughly $4 billion of that total number was in office sales, and driving the market is strong leasing activity from the technology, media and entertainment sectors, according to Marisha Clinton, senior director of tri-state research for Avison Young. "Given the healthy tech employment that we've been seeing as well as the desire for many tenants across Manhattan that want to be in close proximity to the strong technology workforce here, there's been strong demand among tech, media and entertainment tenants," she said.

TAMI aside, what was highly noted was ground lease real estate investment trust Safehold's $1.35 billion in transactions in the Manhattan office market, which was in the form of purchases of the fee where properties were bifurcated between the fee and ground leasehold, which is expected to become more commonplace. "We think this is definitely a trend you all are going to want to watch because we are seeing more and more of these," said James Nelson, principal and head of Avison Young's Tristate Investment Sales Group. "That definitely helped to breathe some new life into the market," he said.