NY Times Real Estate:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/realestate/commercial/02sqft.html?_r=1&ref=realestate Q. Some in the industry see similarities between where we were back in the ’90s and where we are today. Do you? A. We came into the ’90s having lost over 7 million square feet of major tenants. Exxon moved out; Mobil moved out. We don’t have million-square-foot tenants moving out today. Also, we had 21... [more]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/realestate/commercial/02sqft.html?_r=1&ref=realestate Q. Some in the industry see similarities between where we were back in the ’90s and where we are today. Do you? A. We came into the ’90s having lost over 7 million square feet of major tenants. Exxon moved out; Mobil moved out. We don’t have million-square-foot tenants moving out today. Also, we had 21 million square feet of new construction in the early ’90s, where now we have less than a million and a half square feet. So we had much greater space overhang in the early ’90s, and it took Manhattan five to six years to absorb all that space and then to grow. Now what’s the same: there was an influx of foreign buyers, and we are seeing it once again. There isn’t a single day that goes by here that we are not getting calls from or meeting with people from Korea, Germany, China, the Middle East. They are showing up and saying, This is a good moment to stake our claim in Manhattan real estate. [less]