New York’s office market is showing signs of revival, with billions of dollars in refinancing deals and major acquisitions suggesting investor confidence is returning. Four office towers in the city have raised $3 billion in recent weeks to refinance debt.
“Office is back,” Mario Rivera, head of asset-backed securities at Fortress, told the Financial Times, crediting the resurgence to corporations pushing employees back into physical workplaces.
The rebound has been building over time. In January 2025, demand for New York City office space surpassed pre-pandemic levels, climbing 25.3% year over year, according to the VTS Office Demand Index. Yet this strength has not been evenly distributed across the country. “The data shows that while some markets, like New York City, are rapidly returning to traditional office settings, the national picture reflects slow but steady progress,” Ryan Masiello, co-founder and chief strategy officer of VTS, said at the time.
Developers and investors have been moving aggressively to capitalize on the trend. In May, Blackstone secured $850 million—including $600 million in commercial mortgage-backed securities—to partner with Fisher Brothers on 1345 Sixth Avenue, where law firm Paul, Weiss is set to occupy space with an annual rent commitment of $81 million.
The city’s most prestigious towers are leading the recovery. CoStar reported in June that New York’s trophy office market had pulled well ahead of other U.S. cities. Since early 2023, the availability rate in these five-star, best-in-class buildings has fallen from 17% to 10.7%. “That’s a major drop-off in a relatively short period of time,” Victor Rodriguez, senior director of analytics for CoStar, told GlobeSt.com. Trophy office availability elsewhere in the U.S. barely moved, slipping from 23.9% to 23.6% over the same span.
Major refinancing deals are also part of the picture. Vornado raised $450 million by refinancing Apple’s New York headquarters, while The Durst Organization secured $1.3 billion for the former Condé Nast and Skadden offices in Times Square. RXR highlighted renewed investor appetite as well, closing a $1.08 billion acquisition of 590 Madison Avenue earlier this month—the largest non-user office purchase in the city since 2018.
The Financial Times noted a surge in single-asset, single-borrower CMBS transactions backed by New York office towers. So far in 2025, 20 such financings have been negotiated, compared with eight in 2024 and none in 2023, according to Bank of America strategist Alan Todd. Among this year’s largest deals, each exceeding $1 billion, are transactions tied to 3 Bryant Park, 375 Park Avenue, 151 West 42nd Street, 200 Park Avenue, and 66 Hudson Boulevard East.
“Investors are seeing declining vacancy rates and net positive leasing trends … and saying maybe we’ve identified the floor in some of these markets,” Matt Salem, head of real estate credit at KKR, told the Financial Times.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.