Manhattan Office Vacancies Rise the Most in 3 Years

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-02/manhattan-office-vacancies-rise-the-most-in-three-years.html

Manhattan’s office vacancy rate jumped the most since 2009, when the market was reeling from the U.S. credit crisis, as financial companies cut jobs and tenants held back from taking space amid concern the economy will slow. 

The rate reached 9.6 percent in the third quarter, an increase of 0.6 percentage points from the previous three months, Cushman & Wakefield Inc., a New York-based commercial real estate services firm, said in a report today. That was the biggest jump since the third quarter of 2009, when the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and its aftermath spurred a surge in vacancies in the largest U.S. office market. 

The recent increase in empty space reflects job cuts in banking and finance, the city’s biggest private office-using industry, according toKen McCarthy, senior economist at Cushman. Financial-services companies eliminated about 9,600 jobs in New York from May to August, he said in an interview, citing data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.