NEW YORK CITY—When it comes to attracting large tenants, the time-honored real estate maxim has been updated, CBRE EVP Paul Myers said at RealShare New York last week. “It used to be location, location, location,” Myers told the more than 300 industry professionals who assembled for this year's conference. “Now it's location, quality, quality.”

Specifically, Myers was commenting on Related Oxford's Hudson Yards mega-project and what Paul Travis, managing partner at Washington Square Partners, called the project's “remarkable” ability to attract major tenants in short order. “The tenancy in Manhattan has been shifting west,” said Myers. “Hudson Yards is a continuation of that trend.”

The Hudson Yards zoning district in particular, and the Far West Side in general, “is going to be the center of Manhattan 20 years from now,” predicted Robert Knakal, chairman of Massey Knakal Realty Services. He noted that current prices on development parcels in the district bear that out.

Another Knakal prediction was nearer-term: “We will see more buildings sell in New York City this year than ever before. “ He attributed this to what economists refer to as “a positive feedback loop.” Namely, “Values are very, very high, and so people who own these buildings find these prices compelling and put them on the market.” The buyers run the gamut: “local high-net-worth individuals, New York families, institutions, first-time buyers from around the country, first-time buyers from around the globe.”

More broadly, Knakal thinks the next hot neighborhoods will center around transit hubs, wherever in the city they may be. That of course evokes the example of Lower Manhattan, which is in the midst of an office, residential and retail rebirth that few predicted after 9/11.

With all of the development going on Downtown or on the Far West Side, though, it “barely moves the needle” in terms of adding to office supply, said Simon Wasserberger, managing director at L&L Holding Co.  Pointed out Seth Pinsky, EVP with RXR Realty, “The market is even tighter than raw statistics would indicate on the commercial side, especially when you look at modern office space, because so little development has taken place in the past 20-plus years. If you look, we have almost lost as much space in New York City as we've created,” due both to the destruction on 9/11 and conversions of older office stock to residential and hotel uses. E

ven with all of the residential conversion that has taken place, though, panelists throughout the half-day conference cited a need for more workforce housing, although they didn't necessarily agree with the de Blasio administration's ways of encouraging such development. And they noted that formerly affordable neighborhoods, in Brooklyn and elsewhere, have become anything but.

That effect isn't limited to residential, however. In a sign of the times, Myers reported that he has seen tech tenants relocating from Midtown South to Midtown East, having been priced out of the more southerly neighborhood. They've also been heading to the Penn Plaza submarket, and slightly to the north and east of Penn Station, “I think Times Square South will be the next neighborhood to benefit from this spillover effect.”