OFFICE RENTS SURGE

$100/foot rebound

To office landlords’ joy, C-Note leases — those with starting rents of $100 and up per square foot — are making a robust rebound, helping to quell fears about the office market’s long-term health.

CBRE reported that some 105 C-note leases comprising 2.7 million square feet of prime space in Manhattan were signed in 2021. Not only did the total number more than double the meager 49 completed in 2020, it also topped the five-year historical average by 18%.

Gold standard

The $100-plus lease has long been the bragging-rights gold standard in a market where most rents average between $60 and $80 per square foot. A very few, attentiongrabbing deals of up to $300 a foot were usually for very small penthouse floors.

Perhaps the largest new lease in the $100-plus club was Chubb Group, which took 240,000 square feet at Olayan Group’s redesigned 550 Madison Ave. Sources said that the price for a few high floors would rise to $192 a square foot toward the end of a 20-year term.

Others starting at $100 and up in 2021 included for private-equity firm Hellman & Friedman at L&L Holding’s new 425 Park Ave., and law firm Venable LLP at the

Durst Organization’s One Five One, the former Four Times Square.

Generous breaks

There’s a qualifier: CBRE analysts Nicole LaRusso, Michael Slattery and Jared Koeck note that average so-called net-effective rents (NERs) were lower than their $100-plus face values due to generous freerent periods and tenant-improvement allowances.

The average NER in 2021 in the $100-and-up club was $85 a foot, up 25% from 2020 but 6% below the pre-COVID five-year average, CBRE reported. Sources told The Post that Chubb, for example, is getting 12 months’ free rent.

A broker who didn’t want to be named said, “Look, many big leases at any price at any time are cheaper than they sound. Some landlords are giving away the store — sorry, making concessions — in the top, middle and bottom of the market.”

More important is that the big-bucks leases are concentrated in buildings either brand new or expensively redesigned.

One such lease came too late for the CBRE survey. Music streaming service Tidal just took two floors at 799 Broadway. Sources said the starting rent is nearly $200 per square foot at Columbia Property Trust’s new “boutique” property at East 11th Street. JLL’s Mitchell Konsker, leader of the leasing team, would not confirm or deny the rent.