April feels different from March. The market doesn’t move fast, but the inquiries I’m getting have shifted. More F&B operators calling about spaces under 1,500 square feet. More landlords who were holding firm on asking rent quietly telling me they’re open to talking. More tenants who paused their searches in Q4 starting them back up.
This is what I’m seeing on the ground, corridor by corridor. Not the CBRE quarterly report version. The version from someone who walked three blocks of Prince Street last week.
Manhattan: tight where it’s always been tight, softer where you’d expect
The core SoHo blocks (Prince Street, the Spring Street stretch, the West Broadway pedestrian zone) are still the hardest places to find anything. Landlords there aren’t hurting. If a space comes available, it goes fast, and asking rents on the better blocks are still north of $300 per square foot annually for ground floor.
Tribeca is more interesting right now. Greenwich Street south of Chambers has a couple of spaces sitting for three-plus months, and the asking rents feel optimistic relative to what’s actually traded nearby. The residential density is there. The daytime population is there. The asking prices just reflect a 2022 view of the world.
Midtown is still two markets in one. The avenue-facing blocks on Fifth, Madison, and the 50s corridors are performing. The side streets, especially in the 40s, are not. The office market’s hybrid recovery hasn’t fully brought back the lunch and after-work retail economy that made those blocks work before COVID. Some of those spaces are priced for a customer base that isn’t fully back.
Upper West Side and Upper East Side are quietly strong. Residential density on both sides keeps foot traffic consistent regardless of what’s happening with office occupancy downtown. Spaces on Columbus Avenue and on Madison in the 70s and 80s move in under 60 days. Tenants who sleep on those don’t get them.
Brooklyn: Williamsburg still winning, but the gap is narrowing
Bedford Avenue between North 7th and North 11th (L train at Bedford Ave) is about as tight as it gets anywhere in Brooklyn. Basically no vacancies right now, and when something opens there are multiple operators circling. The issue is that rents have caught up to Manhattan secondary corridors. You’re seeing $100 to $150 per square foot on Bedford, which is real money for an independent operator.
The Wythe/Berry corridor is the value play in Williamsburg right now. Operators who can’t get on Bedford are finding that one block over works fine. The residential density is similar, the foot traffic is there, and you can still find spaces in the $75 to $100 range with landlords who want to make a deal.
DUMBO is interesting but limited. Mixed-use buildings near the bridge approaches have some availability, and the tourist traffic is real. The problem is it’s not a neighborhood with much daily-need density. It skews toward destination retail, which narrows the tenant pool considerably.
Park Slope 5th Avenue is underrated. Food and neighborhood services keep absorbing space there, landlords are realistic on rents because they’ve had to be, and you can still find asking rents in the $60 to $80 range. Motivated landlords on older buildings are dealing below that.
What’s actually moving right now
Food and beverage dominates absorption. That’s been true for 18 months and it’s still true in April. The constraint is that F&B operators have real physical requirements: the right gas line, the right ventilation, minimum ceiling height. A lot of available spaces don’t work for them even when the location is right.
Wellness and fitness keeps taking space that fashion used to occupy. Boutique gyms and pilates concepts are credit-worthy tenants who want medium footprints (1,500 to 3,000 square feet). Landlords like them because their members also spend money at surrounding retail. I’ve seen multiple landlords specifically ask whether I have fitness operators in my tenant pipeline.
Specialty food retail is showing up in more conversations than it was a year ago. Cheese shops, butchers, independent grocers. The operators who survived COVID figured out they needed better locations, and some are now in expansion mode.
Where the gaps are
The biggest disconnect right now is between what landlords believe their space is worth and what tenants will pay in the 2,000-to-4,000-square-foot range. That size doesn’t fit most retail concepts in 2026. Too big for a cafe, too small for traditional apparel, and the floor plate requirements are too specific for most other categories.
Spaces sitting longest tend to cluster in that range, in secondary corridors, with landlords who have been waiting two-plus years for a pre-pandemic-quality tenant who isn’t coming. The opportunity there is for a landlord willing to take a realistic deal now instead of continuing to wait.
On the tenant side, the operators getting the best deals right now are the ones who move decisively. Motivated landlords don’t stay motivated forever. If a better offer comes in, it doesn’t matter how long the conversation has been going.
What to watch in Q2
Rate environment. The Fed’s posture on rates is still affecting deal economics, particularly for operators financing buildouts or equipment. If there’s a cut before summer, I’d expect to see a lot more operators actually move on spaces they’ve been sitting on.
Restaurant closures. We track closures on the Station CRM closings map, and Q1 saw more than the same period last year, mostly concepts that opened during the 2022 to 2023 boom and are now feeling the margin pressure of higher labor costs. Those spaces come back to market over the next 60 to 90 days. Most will be the right size for an F&B operator.
Pop-up to permanent conversions. A few operators who started as short-term tenants in 2024 and 2025 are now approaching their landlords about permanent leases. That’s a good sign for a corridor. The concept proved out and the landlord already has a motivated tenant in place.
If you’ve been on the sidelines as a tenant, Q2 is a reasonable time to get serious. For landlords sitting on vacancy past six months, the market is telling you something about the ask.