Two familiar names in Fairfield County’s commercial real estate scene are back on the same team.
Brian Carcaterra has rejoined Newmark Group, working alongside longtime colleague James Ritman. The pair first partnered at the firm between 2003 and 2012, representing tenants and landlords across Fairfield and Westchester counties.
Brian Carcaterra
Carcaterra, now an executive managing director in Newmark’s Stamford office, left more than a decade ago to co-found Homewood Real Estate Partners, a New York-based affordable housing investor. He later held senior roles at CBRE and most recently served as executive vice president at Stamford-based Building and Land Technology (BLT), the developer behind some of the city’s most high-profile office and residential projects.
Carcaterra said he returned to Newmark because it allows him to handle leasing while also offering clients access to capital markets, property management and project management services.
His time at Building and Land Technology, he added, gave him a sharper perspective on how landlords can deliver value to tenants, crediting BLT Chairman Carl Kuehner III with teaching him the importance of building community and creating a sense of belonging in office environments.
Carcaterra said today’s office tenants expect more than just space, with services and amenities playing a larger role in leasing decisions.
James Ritman
Ritman has been with Newmark since 2002, and serves as an executive vice president and managing director of the firm’s Connecticut and Westchester markets.
Newmark has five brokers in its Stamford office.
Ritman said Fairfield County’s office market remains resilient, and the region as a whole benefited from the pandemic as people and companies relocated from New York City.
Fairfield County is also experiencing a surge in multifamily conversions, with 1.4 million square feet of office space taken off the market just last year, helping lower the region’s vacancy rate, which stood at 23.2% at the end of the second quarter of 2025, according to Newmark’s midyear office market review.
Five office buildings in Stamford and one in Norwalk were converted to apartments last year, according to Newmark. The region now has about 35.4 million square feet of office space.
Leasing activity did slow in the first half of 2025, dipping nearly 25% from both mid-2024 and the 10-year midyear average, as tenants became skittish amid broader economic uncertainty and quality space became scarce in core business districts, according to Newmark.
Leasing totaled just under 1.2 million square feet, down from the historical midyear average of 1.6 million.
Suburban areas — especially Greenwich’s non-central business district and Norwalk — saw the most activity, Newmark said. The average asking rent was $37.57 per square foot, down from $38.35 in 2024, according to Newmark.
However, the real estate firm expects leasing activity to pick up during the rest of 2025, with deal volume ending the year closer to historical norms.
Here’s what else Ritman and Carcaterra had to say. The Q&A was edited for length and clarity.
Q: How would you describe the current state of the Fairfield County office market compared to pre-pandemic?Ritman: Post-COVID, the Fairfield County market is stronger than it was before the pandemic. All of these companies that came out from New York City or New York state that took space have grown. They’ve taken more space and have done longer-term deals.
More and more employees are coming to Fairfield County as a result, which has a trickle-down effect with renting apartments, going to the retail services and medical services.
The employers are here, the decision makers are here. More companies continue to take space out here and grow their current footprint.
Q: Which sectors are driving the most leasing activity right now?Ritman: It’s legal, it’s financial services, real estate companies, hedge funds, private equity, and then you have a lot of very large Fortune 500 companies that are based in or have offices in Fairfield County, or Westchester County.
Carcaterra: While the blue chip institutions and industries have grown, there’s also the media explosion between WWE, NBC Sports, Charter Communications. If you look at WWE and Charter alone, they sort of bookend the Stamford train station, which is now being evaluated for a massive redevelopment.
I think the next three, five and seven years will look very different, because established companies with dynamic workforces have determined that this is where they’re going to be, and this is where they’re going to be for a long time.
Q: What’s your 12- to 18-month outlook for the Fairfield County office market?Carcaterra: There’s still a glut of obsolete office stock that exists in Fairfield County — in Stamford, Norwalk and all points in between — that’s been scheduled to be repurposed into different uses.
For example, Stamford is a 16 million-square-foot office market. There’s 3 to 4 million square feet that is being discussed and/or approved (for conversion to multifamily). That would leave you with only about 12 or 13 million square feet, which pushes the supply to an all-time low.
There’ll be a massive disconnect between supply and demand. There could be pressure on rental rates, and there’s going to surely be pressure on occupancy levels.
Q: Do you expect the leasing activity to pick up, remain flat or decline further?Ritman: We feel strongly that it’s going to pick up and remain strong, just because the market is healthy.
We have a lot of activity in the market, and we see more and more companies that will be entering the market and maybe even repurposing other buildings.
Q: What do you see as the biggest challenge facing landlords in Fairfield County?Carcaterra: It’s a high-cost marketplace and not a very inexpensive place to drop in a footprint of 1,000, 2,000 or 3,000 employees.
Labor costs, taxes and schooling are very expensive. That creates a barrier to entry.
Leasing activity did slow in the first half of 2025, dipping nearly 25% from both mid-2024 and the 10-year midyear average, as tenants became skittish amid broader economic uncertainty and quality space became scarce in core business districts, according to Newmark.
Leasing totaled just under 1.2 million square feet, down from the historical midyear average of 1.6 million.
Suburban areas — especially Greenwich’s non-central business district and Norwalk — saw the most activity, Newmark said. The average asking rent was $37.57 per square foot, down from $38.35 in 2024, according to Newmark.
However, the real estate firm expects leasing activity to pick up during the rest of 2025, with deal volume ending the year closer to historical norms.
Here’s what else Ritman and Carcaterra had to say. The Q&A was edited for length and clarity.
Q: How would you describe the current state of the Fairfield County office market compared to pre-pandemic?
Ritman: Post-COVID, the Fairfield County market is stronger than it was before the pandemic. All of these companies that came out from New York City or New York state that took space have grown. They’ve taken more space and have done longer-term deals.
More and more employees are coming to Fairfield County as a result, which has a trickle-down effect with renting apartments, going to the retail services and medical services.
The employers are here, the decision makers are here. More companies continue to take space out here and grow their current footprint.
Q: Which sectors are driving the most leasing activity right now?
Ritman: It’s legal, it’s financial services, real estate companies, hedge funds, private equity, and then you have a lot of very large Fortune 500 companies that are based in or have offices in Fairfield County, or Westchester County.
Carcaterra: While the blue chip institutions and industries have grown, there’s also the media explosion between WWE, NBC Sports, Charter Communications. If you look at WWE and Charter alone, they sort of bookend the Stamford train station, which is now being evaluated for a massive redevelopment.
I think the next three, five and seven years will look very different, because established companies with dynamic workforces have determined that this is where they’re going to be, and this is where they’re going to be for a long time.
Q: What’s your 12- to 18-month outlook for the Fairfield County office market?
Carcaterra: There’s still a glut of obsolete office stock that exists in Fairfield County — in Stamford, Norwalk and all points in between — that’s been scheduled to be repurposed into different uses.
For example, Stamford is a 16 million-square-foot office market. There’s 3 to 4 million square feet that is being discussed and/or approved (for conversion to multifamily). That would leave you with only about 12 or 13 million square feet, which pushes the supply to an all-time low.
There’ll be a massive disconnect between supply and demand. There could be pressure on rental rates, and there’s going to surely be pressure on occupancy levels.
Q: Do you expect the leasing activity to pick up, remain flat or decline further?
Ritman: We feel strongly that it’s going to pick up and remain strong, just because the market is healthy.
We have a lot of activity in the market, and we see more and more companies that will be entering the market and maybe even repurposing other buildings.
Q: What do you see as the biggest challenge facing landlords in Fairfield County?
Carcaterra: It’s a high-cost marketplace and not a very inexpensive place to drop in a footprint of 1,000, 2,000 or 3,000 employees.
Labor costs, taxes and schooling are very expensive. That creates a barrier to entry.
