Salesforce Sublets Floor of Midtown Office Building to VTS

Commercial real estate property technology provider VTS is moving.

The company has scored a six-year sublease from Salesforce at 3 Bryant Park in Midtown. VTS is moving into the entire 14th floor, which consists of 34,000 square feet.

VTS is leaving 141 West 41st Street and plans to move into the Salesforce space in the fourth quarter. VTS was represented by Jim Wenk of Savills, Patrick Heeg of Transwestern and Sam Seiler of JLL. Salesforce was represented by a CBRE team including Alice Fair and James Ackerson.

The move follows a period of explosive growth for the proptech firm, which has more than doubled its headcount from its pre-pandemic level.

Its new home at 3 Bryant Park was sold by Blackstone in 2015 to Callahan Capital Properties and Ivanhoé Cambridge for $2.2 billion. Just 18 months later, an investment fund controlled by Hong Kong’s central bank bought a 49 percent stake for $1.15 billion.

With broad adoption of work-from-home policies in the aftermath of Covid, office leasing has plunged as companies shrink or decline to renew leases. According to Savills, available office space in Manhattan is at an all-time high, with 70.3 million square feet of space ready for leasing.

However, trophy and Class A offices in Midtown have been bright spots. Midtown as a whole has an availability rate of 17.7 percent, while the Financial District’s is 29.3 percent.

The subleasing market mirrors the overall market. As of July 11, some 21.37 million square feet of office sublet space is available in Manhattan, according to Colliers. That’s 79 percent more than when the pandemic began in 2020. Of all available office space, 22.2 percent of it is being offered as a sublet.

“This is a huge percentage for the market to absorb and a tremendous problem for direct landlords and coworking operators that must compete with sublandlords offering cheaper space,” said Ruth Colp-Haber of Wharton Property Advisors. “I believe that the office market will not recover until the backlog of sublease space is cleared out which will take a long time as leases come off the books.”

VTS provides an online platform that it says can serve a number of different functions in one online experience, including leasing, digital marketing, property management and data analytics. Clients include Brookfield, Carr Properties, Shelborn and Oxford Properties Group.