Thanks to corporate mandates requiring employees to return to their desks, it is boom times for the New York City office market.
While other cities lag 12 to 18 months behind the Big Apple, financial services companies have led the charge on office leasing in Manhattan, which is on track for its best year since 2020.
“I think that we’ve turned the corner in a definitive way,” CBRE’s Mary Ann Tighe said. “I think we’re in for a very strong ‘25, but I think we’re in for an even stronger ‘26, ‘27.”
Tighe joined WeWork CEO John Santora and Vanbarton Group’s Richard Coles at TRD’s NYC Forum to discuss the state of the office market. All three panelists were bullish on the future of office, despite economic uncertainty due to President Trump’s trade policies.
“It comes back to the corporate leadership,” Coles said. “The landscape we’re talking about today is a function of decisions that were made 18, 24 months ago, and it may have been unpopular when corporate leaders said ‘back to the office,’ but what that did was, it created that momentum that New York City needed.”
While demand has increased, the tariffs are already motivating some mid-sized tenants to think twice before inking long-term leases, Santora said. That has been a boon to the coworking giant he leads, as companies wait out the 90-day pause on some tariffs and look further ahead toward an unpredictable timeline for bringing more manufacturing in the United States.
“It’s not to say that traditional leases aren’t part of the equation,” Santora said. “It’s a combination of both.”
Tighe said tenants are increasingly looking for buildings with a flex office component as they ink new lease deals. That option was essential in Christie’s 400,000-square-foot lease renewal for its headquarters at 20 Rockefeller Plaza, she said.
“We’re telling landlords if the building is a million and a half square feet or greater, we better have some coworking space in the building because you need it on so many levels,” Tighe said.
The legendary powerbroker also dished on Deloitte’s massive 800,000-square-foot lease at Related Companies’ 70 Hudson Yards. The accounting firm will relocate from Rockefeller Center, its primary office space in the city.
“The interesting thing is the speed with which Related was prepared to execute,” she said. “They had a clear site, fully entitled, with a design, and they were able to actually demonstrate that they could meet the expiration date at 30 Rock.”
Not all cities are recovering at the pace of New York City, Coles added.
“It grabs the headlines when Ken Griffin moves to Miami for tax purposes, but there are upwards of a million people moving to New York because this is where they want to be,” Coles said. “They’re here because it’s New York City.”
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