Both Meta and Amazon are backing away from their plans to expand in New York City, Bloomberg reported. Neither has signaled any intent to eliminate space they already have in the city, but are backing off potential deals to add space.
AmTrust Realty President Jonathan Bennett isn’t just modernizing his privately held real estate firm’s 1960s office tower at 250 Broadway — he’s trying to bring AmTrust itself into the modern world in order to fill hundreds of thousands of vacant square feet there and elsewhere.
Partner Insights spoke with Nick Romito, co-founder and CEO of VTS, the commercial real estate industry’s leading technology platform that transforms how strategic decisions are made and executed across the asset life cycle, about what those changes mean for landlords.
Office occupancy pushed past 40 percent last week for the first time since the start of the pandemic, The City reported. The Kastle Back to Work Barometer increased to 41.2 percent; Kastle Systems measures office occupancy by entry into office buildings.
As we emerge from the pandemic, it’s a whole new ball game for building owners and their various amenity spaces. We are currently witnessing a shift in amenity space requests, that, prior to the pandemic, would seem bizarre, unreasonable, and simply out of this world.
Surging interest rates in recent weeks have left many investors with a choice between losing their deposit or paying much more than expected for their mortgage, said Jay Neveloff, a partner at law firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP.
Employee opposition to commuting means that landlords and cities aiming to refill their office floors may need to do more than renovate old buildings or put more police on street corners. It may require investing in housing, highways, public transportation, and other infrastructure necessary to reduce commute times.
At the start of the pandemic, property owners were spending on HVAC systems, cleaning supplies and signs directing people away from high-touch surfaces and each other. Today it’s the more unconventional amenities’ time to shine — doggie daycares, beehives, grab-and-go cafes, and golf simulators among them. But the perk gold rush comes at a price — and a high one for full-floor amenity spaces.
Commercial Observer met with Lachance in mid-April when he was in Manhattan to serve on a panel at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate’s annual real estate investment trust symposium.
For growing companies, coworking spaces can become overly expensive when headcount increases significantly and many companies find it’s time to level up to their own space.
One of the clearest signs a company is ready to transition to more permanent office space is when it has outgrown its coworking space. As a general rule, companies should think about moving into a short-term lease or sublease when they have more than 75 employees.
Cost is usually the primary factor that leads companies to seek their own office space. Using average figures for coworking desks and office space square footage, at $1,000 monthly per head, a coworking space would cost $900,000 per year for a staff of 75. Comparatively, with an average asking rent of $45 per square foot per year in major U.S. markets — assuming a firm would need approximately 12,000 square feet for a staff of 75 (160 square feet per employee) — its yearly cost would be $540,000.
