By the end of 2020, the average retail availability in each submarket ranged from 27 to 35 percent, according to Patrick A. Smith, vice chairman of retail brokerage at JLL in New York. In 2021, “The price drop was significant,” notes Paul Popkin, a senior managing director in the New York office of Lee & Associates. On the highest-demand drags of Broadway, Spring and Prince, prices topped out as high as $1,000 per square foot pre-pandemic. Last year, Popkin says, rents were about half that.