Manhattan Office Demand Surpasses Averages With 3.6M SF Leased in April

Demand for office space in New York City was healthy and robust in April, as Manhattan’s leasing velocity hit 3.61 million square feet during the month, according to the latest snapshot report from Colliers. 

Manhattan’s office leasing activity in April comfortably exceeded the 10-year monthly average of 2.78 million square feet, and surpassed April 2025’s leasing activity volume of 3.38 million square feet by 6.9 percent. 

“The demand alone was a very healthy number,” Frank Wallach, executive managing director for research and business at Colliers, told Commercial Observer. “If you had a month like April every month for the year, you would have 43 million square feet, which would surpass last year’s total, and that would also surpass the 2019 total.”

Month-over-month, the numbers look a little different, but Wallach said that was to be expected, given the massive deals that closed in March. Between March and April, Manhattan office leasing demand decreased by 38.3 percent. 

“March was such an interesting anomaly,” Wallach said. “The 38 percent drop was not surprising. March was 5.85 million square feet, and that was the single highest month of leasing in Manhattan in nearly eight years.”

Some 2.4 million square feet of March’s Manhattan office leasing actively was taken by Bank of America’s deal at One Bryant Park, which Wallach said was the second-largest lease in Manhattan in the 21st century. 

“I always say one deal can move the needle greatly,” he said. “It’s just always critical to put that in context. [Bank of America] really, really, really drove March’s numbers, so we’re unlikely to get another 2.4 million-square-foot size deal in April.”

Breaking Manhattan down by sector, Midtown’s leasing activity hit 1.15 million square feet in April, while Midtown South saw 1.61 million square feet leased, and Lower Manhattan saw 851,650 square feet of office space leased. 

In the biggest office leases signed in Manhattan in April, law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton took 475,000 square feet at One Liberty Plaza, health care platform Tennr signed on for 124,733 square feet at 345 Hudson Street, Jump Trading inked 99,305 square feet at 50 Hudson Yards, AI firm Sierra took 94,145 square feet at 11 East 26th Street, and fintech company Adyen signed for 90,000 square feet at the conjoined buildings at 111 and 115 Fifth Avenue.

“The market is starting May with a large number of tenants in the market, and deals that are pending,” Wallach said. “We’ve heard some anecdotal cases where there’s more activity in some buildings than they even have space for. Now those are rare cases, but what that means is we are still hearing of a very active market as we get into the late spring and early summer.”  

Amanda Schiavo can be reached at aschiavo@commercialobserver.com.