Galbreath Riverbank debuts office report

Real Estate Weekly, Sept 8, 1993

The average asking rental in midtown Manhattan has declined to $30.17 per square foot, according to the Galbreath Riverbank Office Report, a new publication of Galbreath Riverbank, the full-service real estate firm.

Furthermore, the mid-year 1993 report finds that there are more than 32 million square feet of available office space in Midtown, constituting a 15.89 percent availability rate. The availability rates rise to 25.087 percent and 19.169 percent respectively on Seventh Avenue and Broadway, and to 20 percent in the Downtown district.

"Free rent and workletter packages continue to be aggressive," said Bruce E. Mosler, first vice chairman of Galbreath Riverbank. New construction on the West Side remains ostensibly vacant, according to the report. While the World Trade Center/World Financial Center is exhibiting a health 8.8 percent availability rate, the non-owner occupied, pre-war structures in the Financial District record a high vacancy rate of 35 percent.

But, according to Mosler, "while one cannot expect the large pool of available space to be, in the short run, significantly absorbed, trends do bode for a healthier market. The wave of corporate downsizing seems to have abated."

The availability of discounted sublease space ($26.98/square foot), which caused much of the Midtown malaise, has subsided. And the professional service industries, like law firms, banks and advertising agencies, are now active |shoppers.'

The Downtown market should be helped by the expansion needs of Wall Street powerhouses, like Lehman Brothers, the New York Mercantile Exchange, Morgan Guaranty, Goldman Sachs and Kidder Peabody. Finally, Morgan Stanley's acquisition of 1585 Broadway at a purchase price that exceeded expectations is encouraging.