Manhattan Office Rents Turn Pre-Pandemic Corner

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Manhattan office landlords have finally turned back the clock.

The borough’s overall average asking rent jumped to $79.47 per square foot in October, finally matching the pre-pandemic March 2020 average, according to Colliers’ latest Manhattan office report. Rents climbed 1.4 percent from September — the sharpest monthly increase since August 2019 — and were up 5.7 percent year over year.

Tenants inked deals for 4.54 million square feet, a 54.1 percent increase from the month before, per Colliers. Year-to-date leasing volume reached 37.39 million square feet, keeping 2026 on track for the best year of office leasing since 2000.

“The milestones that were achieved this month are critical in the long-winding recovery that the market’s been going through these last couple of years,” said Franklin Wallach, Colliers’ executive managing director of research and business development. “October was definitely one for the books in terms of the chapters of recovery.”

Midtown and Midtown South accounted for nearly 90 percent of the leasing demand, driven by two blockbuster deals. Citadel’s 1.05 million-square-foot lease at 350 Park Avenue was the month’s largest lease. Citadel’s Ken Griffin, Vornado Realty Trust and Rudin closed last month on a joint venture partnership to develop the 1,400-foot-tall Midtown tower.

In Midtown South, fintech firm Ramp’s 460,000-square-foot extension and expansion at Williams Equities’ 28-40 West 23rd Street was the month’s second-largest lease, followed by law firm Seward and Kissel’s 170,000-square-foot extension at Rudin and Allianz Real Estate’s 1 Battery Park Plaza in the Financial District, per Colliers report.

Available space continued to shrink, too. Manhattan’s availability rate fell to 12.3 percent, its lowest since August 2020, and Midtown’s availability dropped to pre-Covid levels. Sublet supply shrank to the lowest supply since August 2019, down 16.2 percent from a year ago.