Manhattan Was the Most Expensive US Office Market Last Year

Manhattan was the most expensive office space in the US last year at $91 per square foot on average – but London was the top spot globally, according to a Point2 survey of CommercialEdge data and global leasing information gleaned by major brokerages.

Premium office space in London reached $163 psf per year, according to the analysis, which cross-referenced CommercialEdge, JLL, CBRE, and Cushman & Wakefield data.

And in the US, Manhattan was followed by the San Francisco Bay Area, where rents in SoMa and Menlo Park hit $89 psf last year. 

Office leasing in Manhattan has rebounded sharply this year, according to Colliers, with activity hitting 3.16 msf in July. That’s the strongest monthly leasing since January 20 and up 42.8% over June figures

“Despite the highly publicized “flight from Silicon Valley” that we’ve been seeing for the past couple of years, the Bay Area is still a powerhouse of premium office space,” Point2 analysts write.  “In fact, California offices in Palo Alto, Mountain View and Sunnyvale ranked 9th in the world for the most expensive, coming in at nearly $86 per square foot per year — which was on the same playing field as Singapore.”

The top markets were London, Tokyo, Beijing, Hong Kong, Paris, Manhattan, San Francisco, Singapore, the Bay Area, and Toronto.