Manhattan Office Market Trends: The Market Now, in Three Numbers

The Manhattan office market is recovering, though not evenly. Our Q2 2026 report, with data through June 30, 2026, says it in three numbers: availability of 14.5%, down from 17.6% a year before; an average asking rent of $80.42 per square foot; and 10.8 million square feet leased in the quarter. For a tenant there is one implication. The broad discount many companies were waiting for has not shown up, so leverage now comes from an early start and real alternatives, not from the market doing the work for you.

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Updated 2026-10-03 · Nomad Group

The three numbers behind the recovery

Each one answers a different question, and each is printed in the Manhattan Office Report for Q2 2026, which covers April through June.

Availability, 14.5%: how much space a tenant can choose from. Twelve months before, the reading was 17.6%, so the choice has narrowed.
Average asking rent: the report says $80.42 per square foot per year, steady near $80 and not sliding.
Leasing volume, 10.8 million square feet: what companies signed for in the quarter, and the plainest sign that demand is back.

One supporting figure points the same way. Net absorption for the year to date was 4.4 million square feet, so tenants took more space than they handed back.

Where the market is tightest, and where the space is

The recovery is not spread evenly. SoHo is the tightest submarket the report measures, at 13.5% availability with little direct space. Midtown South was at 17.1% and Hudson Square at 17.8%, the second a first-quarter reading.

Higher availability in those two is not weakness. It marks where the large contiguous blocks are, and where a growing company can still get both scale and room to negotiate.

What the numbers do to a tenant's leverage

One more reading matters at the negotiating table. The taking-rent index, which sets signed rents against asking rents, was near 94.8%, against 92.5% the year before. Landlords were conceding less off the quoted price, and with sublease space shrinking, the cheap alternative tenants used to lean on is harder to find.

What remains is the package around the rent. Free months and the improvement allowance are not captured by that index, and both still feature in most deals. A tenant with two real floors in play and months to spare negotiates a different deal from one with a deadline. How long an office takes counts the weeks backward from a move-in date.

A long lease or a flexible one, in this market

Settle your headcount forecast before you read the market. A company that can forecast a year and a half out is in a position to sign for longer, and length is what a landlord pays for: free months and buildout money get larger as the term does. A company that cannot see that far is better off paying a premium for a shorter commitment and treating the premium as insurance.

With face rents steady, the length of the term is one of the few levers a tenant still controls. Coworking, a sublease or a private floor lays out the choice by stage.

The floors below sit around the market's average

The live block on this page is cut to the band around that Manhattan average: floors on our book asking $75 to $100 a square foot a year, before electricity. The report's figure is a market-wide average at the end of a quarter. The block is specific floors and what each asks now, so the two measure one price range in different ways.

Floors asking $75 to $100 per square foot

Live from our listings · 6 of the 11, cheapest first

11 of the 46 floors with a published rent ask $75 to $100 per square foot per year, from 2,940 to 13,266 square feet.

Floors: 11
Sizes: 2,940-13,266 sq ft
Asking rent: $78-$98 / sq ft

Every available floor, with asking rents →

The full guide

This page is the short answer. The long one, with the numbers worked through, is here:

Are Manhattan office rents going down?

No, by the market-wide measure. Our Q2 2026 report says the average asking rent was close to $80 a square foot, and signed rents moved nearer to asking over the year. A tenant's savings now come from free rent, the improvement allowance and the term, more than from a lower quoted number.

How current are the three numbers?

They are from the Q2 2026 edition of our report, published in July 2026 with data through June 30, 2026. A new edition replaces them each quarter, so the report page is the place to check before quoting any of them.

Should a tenant wait for a better market before signing?

Waiting has not paid lately. The good blocks were leasing quickly and landlords were giving less off the asking rent, so a company that held out for a broad discount mostly lost choices. Your own lease date should set the timing. If the lease ends within the next year, the search should be under way.

Is sublease space still the cheap option?

It is usually cheaper and shorter than a direct lease, but there is less of it. Sublease inventory was under 11 million square feet in the Q2 2026 report, against a 23 million peak, as landlords took blocks back to lease directly. The sublease playbook covers the catches.

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