For those who saw signs of improvement in the market earlier this month, look again. While not necessarily worse than the previous reporting period, second-quarter office leasing was propped up primarily by a pair of big renewal deals inked for Viacom and Morgan & Stanley. A closer look at the numbers, meanwhile, seem to suggest that leasing in nearly every asset class is down, down, down—not least of all in Midtown, where Class A office leasing plummeted by 50 percent. With the help of Cushman & Wakefield (CWK)’s first-quarter statistics, and the firm’s lead researcher Ken McCarthy, The Commercial Observer took a look at Manhattan’s three primary office markets and read between the lines to figure out what it all means. After the jump, an annotated guide to office leasing activity in the second quarter.
