Times Square Rent Increase Largest Among Midtown Submarkets This Year
By Richard Persichetti June 18, 2013 7:00 am
reprints
Previously, I wrote about the submarkets that surpassed the historically high asking rent of the 2007/2008 peak, and not surprisingly, all three submarkets were in Midtown South.
But which submarkets have been performing the best over the past 12 months? If I was to take the top year-over-year increases through May, of course I would be writing about just Midtown South again, so instead let’s take a look at the top Class A and Class B asking-rent increases for each of the three major Manhattan markets.
Class A Average Asking Rents
Although four out of the top five submarkets throughout all of Manhattan with the highest year-over-year increases in Class A asking rents are in Midtown South, the largest yearly increase there goes to Chelsea/Meatpacking. At $73.17 per square foot, rents are up 16.1 percent from last May in one of the tightest submarkets in Manhattan, where the Class A availability rate is only 3.3 percent.
Out of the nine Midtown submarkets, Times Square had the largest increase this past year, as Class A asking rents rose 7.7 percent to $85.33 per square foot. This submarket just happens to have the lowest Midtown Class A availability rate at 5.6 percent.
Moving Downtown, Class A asking rents in the City Hall/Insurance submarket increased 8.9 percent to $47.65 per square foot.
Class B Average Asking Rents
Midtown South had three submarkets with increases ranging from 12.7 percent to 12.9 percent—Chelsea/Meatpacking, Flatiron/Union Square and Madison Square/Park Avenue South—but which one had the highest? If you guessed Chelsea/Meatpacking, you are correct, as Class B asking rents there rose 12.9 percent to $56 per square foot.
Midtown Class B was led by the Penn Plaza/Hudson Yards submarket, with an 11.6 percent increase to $47.25 per square foot.
Downtown, the World Trade Center submarket had the largest Class B asking-rent increase, up 10.0 percent to $38.66 per square foot.
