NEW YORK CITY-Fourth quarter office leasing, bolstered by large transactions such as Citigroup's 2.8-million-square-foot lease renewal at 388 and 390 Greenwich St., hit a new record high in the fourth quarter of 2013.

Brokerage firm Studley Inc. states in a draft report that a total of 12.7 million square feet of office deals were inked in the last three months of 2013, a major increase from the 5.8 million square feet registered a year earlier.

The three major office lease deals in the quarter-Citigroup, GroupM's 516,000-square-foot deal at 3 World Trade Center, and CME Group Inc.'s sale and 449,000-square-foot leaseback of the Nymex Building-were all downtown transactions.

Steven Coutts, Studley's vice president for research, said the deals were prompted by lower office space prices downtown and government incentives.

“Manhattan's core office-space users−major banks, law firms and a wide range of professional and business services−remain focused on containing costs,” Coutts said. “Making space work harder is becoming more widespread.” Manhattan's office availability rate was 12.2%, unchanged from a year earlier. Asking averaged in Manhattan averaged $63.04 a square foot in the fourth quarter, a 10.6% increase from the fourth quarter of 2012. See story at Bloomberg News.