NEW YORK CITY-At midyear, Manhattan’s office leasing market for2010 is on pace to look more like 2007 or even 2005, CB RichardEllis and Cushman & Wakefield said earlier this week at mediabriefings. That comes after the two worst consecutive years of thepast decade. Separately, C&W on Thursday reported that theaverage vacancy rate in 31 CBDs across the US has declined for thefirst time since ’07.

“The story for New York during the recession and recovery is howmuch better we’ve performed than the rest of the country,” said KenMcCarthy, C&W’s managing director of research for the New Yorkmetro region, at his company’s second-quarter briefing Wednesday.Since January of this year, the city has been adding office-usingjobs four times as rapidly as the US overall, he pointed out.

Accordingly, year-to-date office leasing volume is up sharplyover the first half of 2009. C&W puts the YTD tally at 12.6million square feet; CBRE says it’s 11.7 million square feet. Byeither measure, though, volume is up nearly 100% over the first sixmonths of ‘09 and has a strong shot at climbing well over 20million square feet for the year.