Robert Sammons

Go south, young broker! Washington, D.C., is, believe it or not, the new New York City.

“It’s kind of the tale of two cities with New York City and D.C., to use a tired term,” said Robert Sammons, the managing director for research at Colliers ABR, during its Tuesday morning Capital Markets Overview on the 11th floor of 40 East 52nd Street.

Or rather, it’s the tale of two brothers. New York is the hard-partying, high-flying younger brother who pulls in reams of money in good times and comes begging for loans in bad. D.C. is the dull, staid, sensible older brother who, in good times and bad, just keeps plugging along.  read more »

The Manhattan office space market has increasingly come to resemble the 1999 film Office Space, with rumors of impending layoffs, nervous employees, and frustrated brokers taking copy machines to empty fields and viciously assaulting them with baseball bats.

O.K., that last part isn’t true. But still, this summer has been a bummer! In July, Manhattan’s overall office vacancy rate hit 7.3 percent, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Same time last year, it was 5.8 percent. Asking rents have continued to creep up, but the numbers have been rendered essentially meaningless by a bonanza of concessions from landlords. (You take this space, I’ll give you one year’s free rent and dinner for two at the Four Seasons!)

At the end of July, Colliers ABR’s Robert Sammons—unafraid to look the fearsome ogre in the eye—predicted the vacancy rate would rise to 10.  read more »

Colliers ABR says the average asking rent for Class A space - the sort of top-tier stuff in Midtown skyscrapers and in downtown addresses like 7 World Trade Center - hit $63.26 a square foot last month, a record that bests the previous all-time high of $61.48 in April of 2001. Robert Sammons, Colliers' research director, credits the spikes in Manhattan office rents to the strength of Midtown, were the average asking rent for Class A space in October was $73.95 a foot, up from around $70 in September. Sammons said that the asking rent for top Midtown office space will likely smack $75 a foot by the end of 2006; in Manhattan overall, it will be renting at $65 a foot by year's end.

Will companies continue to pony up the dough for such pricey addresses? Apparently.

Colliers ABR reports that the vacancy rate for Class A space in Manhattan tumbled in October to 6.5 percent, its lowest level since July of 2001.