Financial Firms Anxious To Sublet Office Space

It’s a complete buyer’s market.

– Brian Rance (subscription required), US Managing Partner, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, a law firm

According to a Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) today, a record 8.9 million square feet of high quality, class “A” office space is available for sublet in midtown Manhattan.  In Greenwich, Connecticut, hedge fund land, financial firms have put 380,000 square feet up for sublet – about 10% of all the mid and high end commercial space in town.  The asking rents are well below what the firms locked in years ago during the boom.

Remember: Commercial real is next (see, for example, “The Other Shoe” (subscription required – e-mail me for a link), Barron’s Cover Story, May 4 2009).