NEW YORK CITY-It’s a mark of the continued vigor of Manhattan’soffice leasing market that as a single brand-new property wasresponsible earlier this year for a slight uptick in the vacancyrate, so that same property—11 Times Square, where law firmProskauerRose in May committed to more than 400,000 square feetof headquarters space—is largely responsible for a month-to-monthimprovement. However, that same statistic can also be cited to showthat the recovery is still fragile.

The 30-basis point decrease in Manhattan’s vacancy rate, from13.1% in May to 12.8% last month, occurs as asking rents also tickdownward, says Cassidy Turley. Robert Sammons, director of researchfor the services firm’s New York region, writes in the report thatthe overall average asking rent slid for the third consecutivemonth, easing to $47.95 per square foot from $48.42 per square footin May. “The recent decline, however, can be tracked back to a risein availability Downtown with its generally lower rent levels, astwo Midtown submarkets actually recorded increases in askingprices,” Sammons writes.

Concurrently, James Delmonte, VP and director of research forJones Lang LaSalle’s New York office, says in a releasingannouncing JLL’s midyear report that leasing activity has been upconsiderably over the year thus far, “while the number of largeblocks of space coming back to the market has slowed.” With demandfinally outweighing supply, Delmonte says, “vacancy levels improvedin some submarkets leading to positive absorption for the overallmarket. Encouraging data in the labor market bodes well for themarket in the long term, but overall asking rents are likely toremain stationary for the remainder of the year.”