By Mark McSherry
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Demand for office space in Manhattan is reaching new highs as professional services firms step up their hiring, according to the chief executive of Equity Office Properties Trust EOP.N, the largest publicly traded office building owner.
"I have never seen anything like this," Richard Kincaid, chief executive of Equity Office, said at the Reuters Real Estate Summit in New York.
"There is just not a lot of space. You are just seeing really, really big rents popping up all over the place.
"I know the stuff we are working on, I just can't say. It is just ready to spike."
Kincaid said New York's strength in white-collar expertise is driving the growth, and that it did not feel like the Manhattan market was developing into a bubble.
"You have still got a lot of big financial services firms that want space," Kincaid said.
"Where the economy is growing plays into New York's strengths. It's professional services. It's consulting. Advertising is back. Investment banks are hiring like crazy.
"For accounting, Sarbanes-Oxley has been a boom in hiring." Continued...
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