During a prolonged bull market fuelled by historically low interest rates and nearly free money Doug Harmon and his team presided over record-breaking sales for many of Manhattan’s trophy office buildings.
No longer. These days, Harmon, the chair of capital markets at Cushman & Wakefield, the real estate services firm, spends much of his time performing “triage”, as he puts it.
The world’s largest office market has of late endured the departure of big-spending Chinese investors, the rise of Covid-era remote working and the economic fallout from the Ukraine war. Now there is mounting concern that the dramatic rise in interest rates will be too much for many owners to sustain and that a long-awaited reckoning is drawing near.