Nielsen is looking to downsize and Vornado, the company’s landlord at 770 Broadway, stands to profit.

The media, marketing and advertising research company, according to a report yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, has hired a leasing team from the brokerage firm CBRE to sublease its space at the 1.1 million-square-foot building amid a boom in the Midtown South leasing market where the property is located.

But subleasing its space is hardly Nielsen’s true intention.

Experts familiar with the company’s occupancy at 770 Broadway say that its goal is really just to structure a termination of its current deal with Vornado so that it can move into smaller offices Downtown where rents are far cheaper.

Nielsen occupies about 240,000 square feet at 770 Broadway, all of floors 7, 8 and 15. The company now needs about half of that. Its lease at the property only stretches another two years however, a term that is hardly sufficient to be an attractive sublease offering.

Nielsen is moving ahead with efforts to find takers however because Vornado would agree to do direct deals with any tenants the firm secures because of the way rents have risen, allowing the landlord to capture current market value rents for the space two years earlier than Nielsen's lease would otherwise allow. Even if Nielsen did find a tenant willing to take the space short term, it wouldn’t be able to profit on the space’s higher market value because Vornado holds recapture rights on the space, giving it the option to take control rather than let a tenant sublease it.

One source familiar with 770 Broadway said that Vornado is asking for $70 per-square-foot rents for space at the property, which is also home to J.Crew.

The building has been suggested as a possible location for several tenants in the market, including Facebook and Microsoft, prominent tech companies that have been searching for space.

Daniel Geiger is reachable at dgeiger@observer.com

According to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association, delinquency rates for commercial and multifamily mortgages dropped for banks, life companies and Fannie Mae but went up for CMBS over the first quarter of 2012. It rose 0.29 percent to 8.85 percent for CMBS mortgages 30-plus days delinquent during the quarter.

Meanwhile, in its U.S. CMBS Delinquency Report for May, Trepp found that the percentage of CMBS loans 30-plus days delinquent had hit an all-time high for the month, jumping to 10.04 percent. This marked a three month increase of 0.36 percent.

The CMBS numbers continue to be impacted by the sheer number of those loans—issued at the height of the credit bubble in 2007—that are coming due now. They’re also influenced, as Trepp pointed out in its report, by the uncertainty roiling Europe’s financial markets.

The MBA found that, among entities with commercial mortgages 60 or more days delinquent, life companies came out ahead with a mere 0.14 percent of their loans delinquent for Q1 2012. They were followed by Freddie Mac (0.23 percent) and Fannie Mae (0.37 percent).

“Back in December we predicted that 2012 could be a rocky year for CMBS in terms of delinquency rate,” Trepp said in its report. “At the time, the delinquency rate was hovering at 9.51 percent and had stayed in a fairly tight band for a number of months. We wrote that the market could easily see a spike of 70 basis points in the short term, as five-year loans that were securitized in 2007 began to reach their maturity dates. That prophecy now appears to have come true.”

Trepp did note, however, that the 2007 five-year loans were heavily front-loaded and that by the end of June the number reaching their maturity should dwindle.

Carl Gaines is reachable at cgaines@observer.com