New York’s office market rebound isn’t just reflected in its strongest leasing activity in years. Well-resourced tenants are increasingly paying top dollar for premium space against limited supply.
Tenants signed a record 313 leases starting at $100 per square foot or more across Manhattan in 2025, well past 2024’s record of 212 leases, a JLL study released this week showed.
The transactions, spanning a record 125 buildings and totaling about 9.96 million square feet, also a record high, represented roughly one-third of all Manhattan leasing activity for the year, according to JLL.
In a telling sign that tenants are willing to shell out for trophy space they covet, 28 transactions, spanning some 485,000 square feet, started at $200 per square foot or higher, including six deals above $250 per square foot, “underscoring the growing normalization of ultra-premium rents for best-in-class assets,” JLL said. SL Green Realty’s trophy One Vanderbilt tower, with direct access to Grand Central Terminal, secured Manhattan’s highest starting rent last year at $305 per square foot, the JLL study found.
The record number of top-dollar deals comes as New York has one of the country’s highest return-to-office metrics that JLL said are nearing 80% of the 2019 level pre-pandemic. And employers continue to bet on New York as a “dominant place of business” to recruit and retain top talent, JLL said.
Also aiding demand was artificial intelligence-driven firms’ move to or expansion in the city as the tech, advertising, media and information sector drove 31% of top-tier leasing volume, nearly matching the total of 33% from the financial services, private equity and hedge fund firms combined, according to JLL data.
The asking rent for the overall New York market has reached a record high of $60.09 per square foot, almost double the U.S. number — also a record high — at $36.35 per square foot, according to CoStar data.
Even though there’s “generally a rising tide across many national markets,” New York remains the “top market in terms of pricing,” Cynthia Wasserberger, the vice chair at JLL who led the review of top-tier rents alongside Carlee Palmer and Margaux Kelleher, told CoStar News in an email. “A few small submarkets in San Francisco and Silicon Valley would be the second highest in terms of rental achievements,” she added.
Most sought-after corridors
As to where New York tenants paying premium rents want to be, the JLL study found Park Avenue remained the most sought-after corridor, accounting for nearly 1.8 million square feet of $100-plus leasing in 2025.
The famed Seagram Building at 375 Park Ave., owned by RFR, had the most transactions over $200 per square foot in a single building last year with eight leases, according to JLL.
Other in-demand corridors and neighborhoods included Avenue of the Americas, Vornado Realty Trust’s Penn District surrounding Penn Station, Hudson Yards and Manhattan West.
Among landlord winners, Vornado again leased the largest overall quantity of top-dollar space, totaling about 2.6 million square feet across 47 deals. Its Penn 1 and Penn 2 towers with direct access to Penn Station “emerged as the most active buildings by transaction count, combining for 25 top-tier deals,” JLL said.
As tenants seek desirable space to attract or keep talent in the flight-to-quality trend, 55% of the top-dollar deals represented new deals or relocations, JLL said.