Leasing News
March 2023
3/27/2023
Cybersecurity firm logs on at SL Green’s One Madison
Palo Alto Networks is leasing nearly 29,000 square feet at the property in Midtown South. The company will occupy the entire 26th floor; its deal brings the building to 59 percent leased.
3/22/2023
LVMH Shuffles Midtown Office, Retail Spaces
French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH is making office and retail moves in Midtown.
There’s a lease out for the company to move its American headquarters to Olayan Group’s 550 Madison Avenue, the New York Post reported. It will be relocating from its digs at 19 East 57th Street.
Should a long-term lease be finalized, LVMH will occupy 150,000 square feet of Olayan’s redesigned tower with an asking rent of $190 per square foot.
3/20/2023
Joele Frank Relocating to 22 Vanderbilt With 78K-SF Lease
Public relations firm Joele Frank is leaving its current digs at 622 Third Avenue in favor of 78,353 square feet at Milstein Properties’ 22 Vanderbilt, formerly 335 Madison Avenue.
The move represents an expansion of about 18,000 square feet for Joele Frank, which signed a 16-year lease with an asking rent of $95 per square foot. Joele Frank plans to open its new office by the end of the year.
3/8/2023
StubHub Consolidates NYC Offices to 44K SF at 3 World Trade Center
This office is now a big-ticket item.
StubHub has found a new assigned seat for its New York City offices at 3 World Trade Center. The ticket sales platform signed a lease for 44,000 square feet on the 59th floor to consolidate several of its Manhattan locations. The asking rent was $125 per square foot
3/2/2023
Engineering Company STV Heads to Empire State Building
STV, an engineering firm that does architecture, contracting, and construction management, is moving to the Empire State Building.
The company will leave 225 Park Avenue South for 65,248 square feet on the 11th floor of the 102-story Art Deco skyscraper at 20 West 34th Street, according to landlord Empire State Realty Trust. The asking rent in the 16-year lease was $69 a square foot.
Investment News
March 2023
3/15/2023
Real-Estate Investor Run on Signature Bank Helped Fuel Its Demise
According to building owners and state regulators, a rush by New York City real estate investors to yank money out of Signature Bank last week played a significant role in the bank’s collapse.
The withdrawals gained momentum as talk circulated about the exposure Signature had to cryptocurrency firms and that its fate might follow the same path as Silicon Valley Bank, which suffered a run on the bank last week before collapsing and forcing the government to step in.
3/14/2023
Analysis: Why Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failed so fast
Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failed with enormous speed so quickly that they could be textbook cases of classic bank runs, in which too many depositors simultaneously withdraw their funds from a bank. The failures at SVB and Signature were two of the three biggest in U.S. banking history following the collapse of Washington Mutual in 2008.
Workplace Trends
March 2023
3/15/2023
Office Was in Trouble Pre-COVID — WeWork Just Hid It: MIPIM Panelists
Mostly everybody at the MIPIM 2023 convention this week in Cannes, France, laments the state of the office market, but they also say it was in trouble long before COVID hit.
Adam Neumann just helped hide it.
Leasing News
February 2023
2/10/2023
Fashion Brand Esprit Opening 38K-SF HQ in Hudson Square
The fashion brand Esprit will bring its stylings to a new 38,257-square-foot headquarters for its creative and marketing teams at 160 Varick Street.
Esprit stitched together a 10-year lease for part of the 11th floor and the entire 12th floor of the Hudson Square building, according to landlords Trinity Church Wall Street, Norges Bank Investment Management and Hines. The owners declined to disclose the asking rent.
2/6/2023
Pearlmark’s Tower 56 Starts Forced Selling for Manhattan Offices
With the mortgage due on its Tower 56 building in the Plaza District, Pearlmark Real Estate is negotiating a deal to sell the property at a price that will just about cover its debt, sources told The Real Deal. The Blackstone Group holds the mortgage on the 1980s-era tower and has been working with Pearlmark to allow for an orderly sale.
It’s the first major case of what many expect will be a long line of forced sales in New York and around the country this year, as owners of outmoded office buildings face the hard truth of trying to refinance in the high interest rate environment.
Investment News
January 2023
1/3/2023
Office Owners Already Reeling From Remote Work Now Face Recession Risk in 2023
Owners of office buildings stumbled through 2022 when their holdings underperformed most every other type of commercial real estate. Things look poised to get worse in 2023.
Landlords have been longing for employees to head back to office buildings in greater numbers. But the national return rate has crept up slowly. For the past three months, it has plateaued at about half of what it was before the pandemic.
Now, a possible recession is making the outlook for 2023 even gloomier. New business searches for new office space, after rebounding in 2021, fell in 2022 to 44% of what they were in 2018 and 2019, according to VTS, a firm that operates a data platform that tracks tenant demand.