The Plaza

• August 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office Leases: Manhattan office leasing still has a long way to go. Leasing volume during the first half of 2024 was up 16% year-over-year. Even if leasing volume continues at the same pace for the second half of the year, it would still be about one-third below 2019. This past quarter, the Plaza District led leasing, accounting for more than 30% of Manhattan’s leasing volume. The flex office industry leased almost half a million square feet in Manhattan during the highest quarterly volume in the industry since 2019. Certain Midtown corridors are faring better than others. On Park Avenue, for …
  
  
• July 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: The number of new leases Downtown was 35% below the five-year average. Blackstone is finalizing a deal to expand its headquarters at 345 Park Avenue, upping its lease from 750,000 SF to just over 1 million SF. Blackstone extended its lease by six years to the end of 2034, approximately 55% of the 1.9M SF office building. Two-year old Hudson Yards skyscraper is now 81% leased. Tishman Speyer signed five new lease agreements totaling 129,500 square feet at its Hudson Yards tower. Bloomberg extended its lease for another 11 years at 731 Lexington Avenue in the Plaza District for …
  
  
• May 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: The chief executive of Manhattan’s second-largest landlord bemoaned free rent and tenant allowances as a “killer.” Vornado needs to commit as much as $300 per square foot on concessions to secure companies as tenants for more than $40 per square foot over 10-year deals. The weighted average rent of Vornado’s Manhattan office buildings is $100 per square foot. Demand for the best office buildings in New York has not only recovered but it’s causing a spillover effect. Large tenants that have lease terminations over the next several years are racing to snap up space while it’s hot in trophy …
  
  
• July 2023 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: NYC office struggles no threat to tax revenue: Worst-case 40% value decline would decrease revenue up to 1.4% by 2027 The city would face a revenue shortfall of $323 million in fiscal year 2025 (which starts on July 1, 2024) if the value of office properties declines 40% from 2023 to 2029. By the time fiscal year 2027 rolls around, that shortfall would be projected to jump to $1.1 billion. That figure represents only 3% of the city’s property tax levy and 1.4% of its tax revenues. The city’s tax revenues may be slightly worse condition than suggested. …
  
  
• February 2023 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: The amount of available office space has increased almost 70% since the onset of the pandemic to 91.4 million square feet. After 2.8 million square feet of negative net absorption in the fourth quarter, net absorption since the start of the pandemic now stands at negative 37.6 million square feet. Asking rents for Class A space in Manhattan averaged $81.51 per square foot in the fourth quarter, up slightly from a year ago. Net effective rents are down after factoring in concessions. Tenants in the TAMI are increasingly upgrading to newer spaces. While 37% of companies in those fields …
  
  
• May 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Chase rents 8.7 million square feet in the city. Chase is trying to sublease 700,000 square feet at 4 New York Plaza in the Financial District and 100,000 square feet at its Hudson Yards office, 5 Manhattan West. The national office vacancy rate is already 12.2%, the highest of the pandemic. It’s up from 9.6% at the end of 2019. About 243 million square feet of office leases are set to expire across the country in 2022. Lease expirations are projected to exceed 200 million square feet in each of the following three years as well. Tenants are negotiating …
  
  
• December 2020 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office: Manhattan office leasing volume in 2020 will be 52% lower than the year before. 3.12 million square feet of sublease space came on the market from April to September boosted sublets’ share of total availability to 23.2% from 22.1%. A decline in Manhattan’s asking office rent average was relatively small in the second and third quarters this year 3%, partly because landlords took a “wait and see” approach during the second-quarter lockdown. In the third and fourth quarters of 2008, the average asking price dropped by 15.3%. Although the current downturn has largely been marked by a lack …
  
  
• August 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments 476 new building permits were filed in the three-month period from April through June, spanning 9,309 multi-family units. Nearly half of the footage is residential, just over one-third is commercial, and the rest is split between education and utilities. Amazon said it would increase its fulfillment center square footage by 50% in 2020, that is on top of the 15% increase it reported in 2019. NYC Health + Hospitals’ six administrative offices were consolidated at 50 Water Street and resulted in $200 million in cost savings . HHC signed a 25-year lease for 526,552 square feet. …
  
  
• August 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: 22 West 35th Street, a 4,340 RSF building asking $22,800,000 209 West 20th Street is a 12 story free market apartment building asking $9,500,000 152 West 24th Street is a 2,468 RSF building asking $6,800,000 57 West 38th Street is a retail condo 9,500 SF on ground floor and basement asking $12,500,000 10 West 46th Street is a commercial condo 4,915 SF asking $5,200,000 91 East Broadway Hotel for sale 15,113 SF asking $20,000,000 420 Fifth Avenue commercial condo 18,003 RSF asking $21,500,000 62 Mulberry Street, a 44,160 RSF parking garage for sale asking $18,500,000 Buildings Sold: …
  
  
• July 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Residential Cooperatives / Condominiums In the past few years, developers have rushed to build scores of glitzy new projects, flooding the market and spoiling buyers for choice. There are now more than 15,000 unsold condos in the city. Of that 15,000 more than 15% or around 2,600 units is in just six buildings. Lenders are largely working with the building owners to give them time for the market to stabilize. Some of the inventory will be repositioned. In New York City, some developers are hoping to clear a glut of unsold units by offering bulk deals at …
  
  
• May 2019 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office: More than 9 million square feet has been leased to date this year, 20% increase year-over-year from 2018 to 9.07 million square feet. Asking rents reached record highs averaging $76.57 a square foot, up from $73.06 from Q1 2018. Downtown leasing volume of 2.56 million square feet was up 6.4% from the last quarter of 2018. This was in part due to the We Company’s 201,000 square foot lease at 199 Water Street. Midtown South leasing volume declined 17.1% for the first quarter of 2019, with 2.22 million square feet leased and was down 47.2% from December 2018. …
  
  
• February 2019 New York New Developments
• The top 10 office lease deals totaled 2.65 million square feet, up more than 885,000 RSF more than the previous months top 10 leases. Deutsche Bank is set to take over 1.1 million square feet of office space at 10 Columbus Circle and will leave 60 Wall Street. Millennium Management signed a lease for 300,000 square feet of space at 399 Park Avenue, relocating from 666 Fifth Avenue. Asking rents are between $73 and $90 per square foot. WeWork signed a lease for 236,000 square feet of space across seven floors at 1440 Broadway, where it will have its own …
  
  
• December 2018 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: After months of speculation, Amazon made its long-awaited HQ2 announcement. The Seattle-based company will divide its second headquarters between Crystal City in Virginia and Long Island City in New York. New York State plans to dole out $1.7 billion in tax credits and grants to Amazon for choosing Long Island City. This month’s top office leases accounted for more square footage than last month. The top 10 office lease deals last month totaled 1.9 million square feet, larger than September’s top 10 leases, which totaled 1.1 million square feet. City of New York signed the largest lease of …
  
  
• August 2018 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office Manhattan leasing activity totaled 8.96 million square feet in the second quarter. Despite good demand, there is 16.7 million of office space under construction which will continue to put pricing pressure for years to come. There was an increase in all sublease markets. Midtown had a 3.6% increase and Midtown South 5.5% increase and Downtown has a 76% Increase. Downtown’s vacancy rate is expected to hit double digits in the second quarter because of the recent opening of 3 World Trade Center. The 2.2 million-square-foot tower was delivered with 45% of the space pre-leased. small_column_chart_by_brian Manhattan Retail Many …
  
  
• August 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: New York City’s hotel market had a better-than-expected first quarter in 2018, with revenue per available room growing 7.4%. Warehouse space is at its tightest level since the first dot-com boom, and it’s driving business. The second quarter saw availability fall to 7.2%, the lowest level since 2000, as demand continues to outpace supply. Hotel and condominium developer Lightstone Group plans to build a fourth Moxy Hotel in Manhattan at the site of a lighting store in the Bowery. Lightstone is in contract to acquire the building at 151 Bowery from Emmut Properties. Chinese insurers, conglomerates …
  
  
• August 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for sale: Brookfield Property Partners is in talks to buy a stake in the 1,400-unit Waterside Plaza complex in Kips Bay. The $600 million deal is not yet finalized and there’s no guarantee it will go through. The complex includes apartments, stores and space rented to the British International School of New York. The owner is Richard Ravitch. A six story building at 75 Warren Street is for sale for $12,950,000 or $1,199.07 SF. It has commercial space with 16-foot ceilings. 240 Fifth Avenue is a 5 story commercial building for sale with an asking price of …
  
  
• February 2018 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• New York Office: Manhattan’s office market saw average asking rents fall in 2017 for the first time in seven years, as landlords lowered prices and more expensive spaces left the market. Average asking rents declined slightly to $72.74 per square foot. Lower Manhattan asking rents increased year-over-year (up 6.8% to $63 per square foot). Hudson Yards/Manhattan West supplanted the Plaza District as Manhattan’s most expensive submarket, though its small size 7.74 million square feet compared to the Plaza District’s 55.3 million square feet, makes it much more sensitive to shifts in pricing. The submarkets of Soho, Murray Hill, Hudson Square, …
  
  
• December 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: Retailers south of 96th Street that pay more than $250,000 per year in rent also pay a tax on that rent. A new bill would raise the threshold to $500,000, meaning about 2,000 business would escape the tax. London-based rhubarb, a major hospitality company in England, plans to open new restaurants at 30 Hudson Yards and at the Hudson Yards Shops & Restaurants. The restaurant at the mall will contain 5,800 square feet on the fifth floor. At 30 Hudson Yards, rhubarb plans to open a 10,000-square-foot restaurant on the 92nd floor. Soho Properties, in partnership …
  
  
• October 2017 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey seems to be leaning toward building a new bus terminal on the Eighth Avenue site, rather than expand to another location. The plan now is to build two new floors on top of the terminal that is already in place. Those levels would be for the buses while the three lower levels are being rebuilt. Barry Diller officially declared Pier 55 dead after years of legal disputes and around $40 million in pre-construction costs A startup wants to pay landlords $10,000 per month or more to install intelligent, electronic …
  
  
• September 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings For Sale: Thor Equities has put the two-story, 50,000-square-foot retail condominium at 88 Greenwich Street, that is home to the 9/11 Tribute Center up for sale for $52 million. New York REIT is marketing 1440 Broadway, a 749,000-square-foot building. The real estate investment trust, which is in the process of selling its 4.4 million-square-foot portfolio as part of the comp. The Broadway property is expected to get $775 per square foot or $580 million. NYRT purchased the building in 2013 from Rockpoint Group and Monday Properties, paying $530 million. The majority owner of the Plaza Hotel is …
  
  
• February 2017 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Jared Kushner sold his equity stake in 666 Fifth Avenue though the identity of the buyer and what they paid for remains unknown. Kushner paid $1.8 billion for 666 Fifth Avenue in 2007, he then sold off a major stake in the retail portion to Carlyle Group and Crown Acquisitions for $525 million. The Chinese Investment in foreign property increased by more than half last year. The U.S. received the bulk of those investments, totaling $14.3 billion. New York University signed a lease for 58,000 square feet at 180 Madison Avenue, and has committed to taking another 41,000 …
  
  
• December 2016 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office leasing Manhattan leasing activity stood at 28.13 million square feet year-to-date at the end of October, up 5.4% through the first 10 months of 2015. Year-over-year leasing activity in Midtown held relatively steady, down 8.2% compared to last year. In Midtown South, leasing activity was 420,000 square feet, down more than 50% from the same month last year. Tenants signed deals to take more than 2 million square feet of office space in October, down more than a third from the same period last year. Midtown South leasing volume between the beginning of July and the end of October …
  
  
• November 2016 NYC Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office A surge of new supply in Manhattan’s office market is starting to make a dent on rents. With millions of square feet in new office space being built at Hudson Yards and the World Trade Center complex, some market observers are warning of a supply glut. Manhattan office market has had a negative absorption rate, as leasing activity through the third quarter has not been able to keep pace with additional supply. Absorption year-to-date sits at negative 2.2 million square feet. The Downtown office market shows positive absorption of nearly 570,000 square feet, while both Midtown and Midtown South …
  
  
• August 2016 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: The Blackstone Group is shopping its 665,000-square-foot office tower at 1065 Sixth Avenue and hopes to get as much as $700 million. ABC Carpet & Home is shopping around its property at 880-888 Broadway, an office-and-retail condominium that could get upwards of $200 million, or over $2,600 per square foot. ABC has owned and fully occupied the six-story, 76,400-square-foot building since 1981. The property has a 20,600-square-foot retail condo and a 55,800-square-foot condo for office and manufacturing space. It is still not clear if ABC Carpet would vacate upon selling the building or make a sale-leaseback agreement. …
  
  
• July 2016: New York New Developments
• New Developments U.S. commercial real estate values continue to experience a slowdown in growth in 2016. Despite the slight uptick, property value appreciation has slowed significantly, after near-double-digit gains in each of the past few years. Cap rates have stopped declining. The City Council approved plans to rezone portions of the Financial District that will allow landlords to fill unused space with retail. 20 buildings along Water Street can fill in 110,000 square feet of pedestrian arcades. In exchange, the landlords are required to upgrade nearby plazas and any of the arcades larger than 7,500 square feet must go through …
  
  
• July 2016: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Harry Macklowe and Qatari investment bank QInvest closed on a deal to buy 432 Park Avenue's retail space for $411.1 million. CIM Group is developing the 1,396-foot condo tower in partnership with Macklowe the seller. The cube will include 6,600 square feet of retail space and will be connected to 20,000 square feet of retail space in the tower itself through a 30,000-square-foot underground concourse. Global Holdings is in contract to buy 1250 Broadway, an office tower owned by Jamestown and Murray Hill Properties, for $565 million. 1250 Broadway is a 39-story, 721,000-square-foot tower. The contract …
  
  
• April 2016: New York New Developments
• New Developments Bizzi& Partners, Michael Shvo and New Valley raised $175 million through the EB-5 program from the Chinese for their 91-story tower at 125 Greenwich Street. The developers were about halfway to reaching their goal through the EB-5 program.Vornado plans to combine its One Penn and Two Penn Plaza office buildings to form a 4.2 million-square-foot complex. New renderings for the combined building of one and two Penn plaza show a new glass facade and canopy over Seventh Avenue from Penn Station revealing a reorganized lower-level retail space.Banks are exercising more caution when it comes to financing commercial real …
  
  
• June 2015: New York New Developments
• Foot traffic on madison avenue has declined by 200,000 people over the last seven months when the Whitney closed in October. While many luxury retailers still maintain locations there, some of them are global brands that are simply there for the status and are actually losing money on the area rents.The City Council approved plans for One Vanderbilt, the 63-story, 1.6 million-square-foot office tower to be built next to Grand Central Station. The tower will be anchored by TD Bank, with 200,000 square feet. One Vanderbilt will deliver critically-needed, state-of-the-art Class A office space and dramatically upgrade Grand Central's overburdened …
  
  
• May 2014 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• With Manhattan retail rents skyrocketing retailers such as Rizzoli Bookstore and J&R; Music and Computer World have shuttered. Retail tenants are increasingly turning to hybrid models to be profitable. Despite being one of the wealthiest places in the nation and a shopping mecca for 50 million plus tourists, Manhattan still has more vacant retail space than anyone can count. This is caused by Landlord seeking higher rents than tenants can profitably operate. The two emerging centers for tech office tenants in the city are the Manhattan corridor spanning 14th Street through 42nd Street, and Downtown Brooklyn. Tech firms are looking …
  
  
• May 2013 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Retail rentson West 34th Street are now $1,000 a square foot. Swatch Group just signed a 10-year deal for 1,800 square feet at 112 West 34th Street, where the asking rent was $1,000 per square foot.The Chelsea/Meatpacking area of Midtown South had the lowest availability of office space of any of Manhattan’s 19 submarkets. 6.9 % of space was vacant in the first quarter of 2013, a drop from 9 % in the previous quarter.There are anumber of class A office buildings are for sale in Manhattan. This could be a sign of a real estate bubble. The total dollar …
  
  
• January 2013 NY New Developments
• NY New Developments Starchitect Norman Foster’s plans for the renovation of the New York Public Library flagship on Fifth Avenue were revealed, with features including a multi-level atrium, Bryant Park views and a teen center. Project construction will kick off this summer and will be completed in 2018. A long-stalled Midtown construction site has started construction again on a residential project at 325 Lexington Avenue. Permits for construction were renewed in July 2011. The new plans call for a ground floor restaurant and bar, 103 apartments with two full-floor penthouses, a club room and a fitness center. Construction may have …
  
  
• October 2012 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Companies are looking in more trendier neighborhoods downtown or downsizing which is leaving the Plaza office market with high vacancy. Available space in the Plaza market (between Sixth Avenue and the East River between 47th and 65th streets) seems to have reached a two year high to 12.3% from 10.5% compared to last year. The Plaza office market is struggling. Financial firms which occupy roughly 30 percent of the district’s offices are tightening their belts, seeking lower rents, and moving into smaller spaces. Still others are seeking cooler addresses south of Midtown, leaving hundreds of thousands of pricey square feet …
  
  
• May 2012 New York New Developments
• New Developments Morgan Stanley just signed a lease for almost 1.2 million square feet of space at Brookfield Office Properties Inc.'s 1 New York Plaza in lower Manhattan. The bank, which currently occupies about 816,000 square feet at the building, will expand by an additional 337,000 square feet. The agreement is the largest office lease for a single building in New York since 2008. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s push to modernize Midtown East office buildings has become a legacy issue as the mayor’s reign whines to a close. Bloomberg wants to re-zone the area bounded by Third and Fifth avenues and …
  
  
• November 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments The Chelsea Art Museum located at 556 West 22nd Street is about to be replaced by Hewlett-Packard, which has special plans for the building. HP signed a 10-year lease for the entire 34,500 feet inside the three-story museum building at 556 West 22nd Street near 11th Avenue.. Drastic job and spending cuts are in the cards for 2013 for the New York City construction industry, according to a report released today by the New York Building Congress entitled "New York City Construction Outlook 2011-2013." Construction spending is expected to total $27.7 billion this year.The average number of construction …
  
  
• July 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments Governor Andrew Cuomo, signed a statewide property tax cap legislation, caps property tax increases at 2 percent, or the rate of inflation, whichever is less. Only a 60 percent vote in local communities override Cuomo's legislation. "We are beginning a new era in which New York will no longer be the tax capital of the nation," Cuomo said Community activists opposing the Rudin family's proposed takeover of the St. Vincent's Hospital campus in Greenwich Village dropped their court appeal without ever appearing before a judge.New York led a second consecutive month of U.S. housing price gains. Nationwide home …
  
  
• April 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Host Hotels & Resorts closed on the $313.5 million sale of the New York Helmsley Hotel, which will be reflagged under the Westin Hotels & Resorts brand in mid-2012 after an extensive renovation. Host Hotels, will renovate the hotel, at 212 East 42nd Street, with a complete overhaul of its 775 guest rooms as well as a meeting space upgrade.Dune Real Estate Partners has agreed to pay $190 million for Anglo Irish Bank's mortgage loan on the embattled Mark Hotel on the Upper East Side. The note, which had a face value of around $300 million, …
  
  
• October 2009 New York New Developments
• Major Developments Stalled construction projects are not having much of a psychological impact on the city. Despite an increasing number of delayed projects, including 250 West 55th Street, 99 Church Street and Solow's First Avenue project, any psychological effects are likely to be short-lived, because the projects will be completed eventually. Large banks are only about halfway done with their commercial real estate losses. The U.S. commercial real estate losses could reach 10 or 15 percent of loans in this cycle. Banks with retail and office loans face the highest risk.The Plaza hotel is on tough times. The building's lower …
  
  
• September 2009 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan's office rents are declining more sharply than those in other U.S. markets, though it's probably due to a soaring multi-year run-up. Average Manhattan asking rents were $60.23 per square foot, down from $71.59 a year ago, or an almost 16 percent plummet. Midtown leasing velocity beat its five-year average for the first time in 18 months while the availability rate of office space improved slightly for only the second time since late 2007. There was 1.58 million square feet leased in Midtown in July,up from 1 million in June, besting its 60-month average of 1.32 million square feet. The …
  
  
• June 2009 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• 19.3% of the 15 million square feet in Class A buildings in the southern portion of the Plaza submarket is available for lease. The Plaza submarket is located between Fifth and Second avenues and 50th and 54th streets. The northern half of the Plaza District is defined as Fifth to Second avenues between 54th and 60th streets.. The availability rate for Manhattan office space hit its highest level in 13 years last month. The amount of office space available for rent reached 13.4 percent in April, up from 12.9 percent a month earlier, and average asking rents fell 2.5 percent …
  
  
• June 2009 New York Buildings For Sale
• Manhattan Buildings sold A second-floor duplex at the Plaza Hotel Residences sold for $2,751 per square foot, about half the price that similarly sized units were closing for last year. The three-bedroom unit with 4,283 square feet was sold by the developer, Elad Properties, to a company called Paradeplatz Ltd. for $11.786 million. The condo faces Central Park in the rehabilitated hotel at 768 Fifth Avenue. The Windermere has been sold to Windermere Property LLC, a company that made an agreement with the city to repair the landmarked building. The former owner and Tokyo-based developer Toa Construction had reached a …
  
  
• June 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments Developers of a Jean Nouvel-designed skyscraper adjacent to the Museum of Modern Art have applied to build a tower seven stories taller than the original proposal unveiled two years ago was 75 stories tall. The building has been controversial, with Community Board 5 criticizing its height and bulk in a resolution in March 2008. The mixed-use project from Houston-based international developer Hines Interests will have 100 hotel rooms and 120 condominium units on the upper floors, and also include a 60,000-square-foot expansion of MoMa's galleries on the second to the fifth floors. The amount of space for the …
  
  
• March 2009 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Weak leasing in Manhattan's submarkets continues to trigger comparisons with velocity rates not seen since the early 2000's. The Penn Station Midtown district in January, had only one 10,000 square feet rental, and only 15,000 square feet was leased in the Plaza District. The vacancy rate for Manhattan Class A properties rose in January to 10.2 percent, cracking through the 10 percent ceiling for the first time since November 2004, The overall vacancy rate in the borough was 11.3 percent, up from 10.4 percent the month before, and average asking rents dropped by $1.03 to $59.30. In Midtown, the Class …
  
  
• July 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsThe city has reached a deal with a developer that will bring schools to a mixed-use development planned for Midtown East. With financing from New York City Educational Construction Fund, the World Wide Group will build a new elementary school and a new high school that would replace the High School for Art and Design. In exchange, the city will lease the developer a 1.5-acre site at East 57th Street and Second Avenue. World Wide plans to build 200,000 square feet of retail and 488,000 square feet of residential space. Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled a plan to rejuvenate the …