Brokers warn that year-end flurry is no indication of boom.

Despite reports of increased activity in the leasing sector, Manhattan brokers feel that the hard times are far from over. It is true that people have been closing more deals in the past few months, they say, but those deals are usually to the tenant's benefit.

According to Brian Boehmcke, director of strategic agency services with Cushman & Wakefield, "There is always a year-end flurry which leads people to be a little more expedient. But it's still a tenant's market. Right now, there is one, maybe two tenants chasing a given piece of space."

So what's behind all the activity? Apparently, the tenants know that the market is likely to improve in 2004 and want to take advantage of the current low prices.

"What you are seeing right now is a lot of tenants that have one of two years left on their leases trying to take advantage of the slowness of the market," said Fred Posniak, vice president of W&M Properties, LLC. "So they are talking to their landlords about advance renewals."

The landlords, for their part, try to hold on to good tenants, even at discount prices.

"Business is starting to pick up, but not tremendously and the rents are a little stagnant," Posniak noted. "A smart landlord will do a renewal in advance if it's with someone who's got good credit and will be paying rent years down the road."

David Hoffman, executive managing director and co-head of the brokerage department at Colliers ABR, is of the same opinion. "Many tenants are in the market today because they want to take advantage of a favorable environment," he said.

"They are equivocating a lot less than a year ago because it's more risky to delay signing a lease now."

Still, Hoffman disagrees with the perception that deals are getting closed faster now, a trend that has been reported in Crain's New York Business.

"Every lease is like childbirth, once you start negotiating it, its takes a long time," he said. "They are complicated documents that have to consider a whole variety of issues."