1 Vanderbilt

1 Vanderbilt is dead center Midtown just steps from Grand Central. Canary Wharf is in the boondocks relative to central London. Some buildings in midtown may be hurt by companies moving downtown or Brooklyn, or on the Westside but not a brand new marquee building like 1 Vanderbilt.

my friend looking for an office is obsessed with the building, though he thinks the asking prices are nuts. I suspect a lot of people in his industry would love to rent an office there.

Grand Central sub-market has traditionally had the highest occupancy rates in Midtown due to its great location but also because it catered to small space users looking for cheap rent in B/B- buildings. It will be interesting to see how this building performs given its large blocks of space and high asking rents. My guess is that location wins out and building will become a success as long as office market does not crash.

The high water mark for office rents has been set the past few decades by boutique financial firms. Those firms have been shedding space rather than increasing in the past year. And a lot of firms/ which seemed wedded to being in prime Midtown West locations now seem to be decamping for downtown and Hudson Yards. As far as I know 1 Vanderbilt has signed only 2 major tenants - TD Bank and DZ/DVB Bank

Representing a total of about 235,000 out of 1.6 million SF of space - a little less than 15%.