In New York, it is well established that supply has continued to outpace demand across the office sector.

A recent analysis of the New York office market found that new leasing activity had sharply plummeted during the second quarter of 2023, which has exacerbated the supply-and-demand imbalance and increased the amount of available office space to more than 127 million square feet in the Big Apple, up from the 123 million square feet available at the start of the year.

This slowdown in leasing activity has resulted in several buildings across the New York office market with large amounts of available space sitting on the open market for a considerable amount of time.

In Manhattan alone, more than 220 office buildings have advertised at least 100,000 square feet of space as available for at least two years.

Of Manhattan’s three main office submarkets, Midtown Manhattan, which contains the largest total of office buildings of any submarket in the U.S., unsurprisingly has the highest tally of languishing buildings at 135.

Downtown Manhattan, which continues to battle rising vacancy rates, has a tally of 61 buildings. Midtown South, a more residential area with no office skyscrapers, has 27 office buildings that have had 100,000 square feet or more of available office space for the past two years

In total, New York’s office market contains 321 languishing office buildings among the 979 million-square-foot New York office market. By comparison, Seattle, Boston, Atlanta and Philadelphia, which rank among the largest office markets in the U.S. and account for 1.2 billion square feet of inventory, contain a combined tally of 372 languishing office buildings.

Market participants expect little to change as the second half of 2023 continues to unwind, with tenants exhibiting little urgency to make long-term real estate decisions despite the wide availability of options at the moment.