The Manhattan office market showed signs of life last month, with monthly leasing activity hitting levels four times higher than a year ago. 

About 3.09 million square feet of office space was leased in Manhattan in November, an increase of 14.8% over October levels and well above the 0.79 million square feet leased the same time last year, according to new research from Colliers. November also marked the first month since January 2020 where leasing activity hit more than 3 million square feet.

The rate of available space across Manhattan tightened by 0.1 percentage points to 16.9% in November, a negligible uptick when measured against the overall availability rate increase since March 2020: 68.6%, or 90.81 million square feet.  It was a similar story for sublease availability: while the net amount decreased for the fourth consecutive month, the total sublet inventory has increased by 63.5% since last March, to 19.46 million square feet