SL Green Realty, Manhattan’s largest office landlord, reported a decline in its third-quarter occupancy rate and said that metric won’t meet its prior year-end target as prospective tenants are taking longer to sign deals.

Same-store office occupancy, including leases that were signed but not yet started, dropped to 89.9% from 92.8% a year earlier, even as it marked a small improvement from 89.8% in the second quarter.

SL Green executives said on a call with Wall Street analysts it doesn’t expect that rate will make its previous target of 92.4% by the end of the year.

That was “an ambitious goal to get to 7.5% vacancy in a market that’s 18% vacant,” Chairman and Chief Executive Marc Holliday said on the call, adding the delay in making that prior target was less about the economic uncertainty that’s holding up tenants’ decisions. “People are exploring all their choices because they have more choices. … They just have more opportunity before they narrow in on the one they want.”

The office availability rate in Manhattan last quarter surged to a new record high of 17.9%, Colliers said in a study recently.

Still, even though tenants are taking longer to make decisions, Holliday said the New York real estate investment trust’s occupancy rate is “trending up.” Case in point: The company has some 1.1 million square feet of deals in the pipeline that have a “high probability” of closing that he said “is more telling” of leasing demand.

“We bottomed out in vacancy in New York in the second quarter,” Holliday said, adding the tide has turned. “The trend is in our favor. As companies continue to call people back to work ... predictions of existential crisis for New York office buildings are way overblown.”

Still, he acknowledges, like the rest of the real estate industry, SL Green also has been hurt by rising interest rates and is looking for more cost-cutting opportunities among its strategies to weather the market climate. “We are cutting our capital spending to only what we need to spend,” he said.

SL Green recently said its longtime President Andrew Mathias is leaving his position in a surprise move that is expected to generate cost savings at a time when both the New York and U.S. office sectors are struggling. The severance and stock-based compensation payment for Mathias led SL Green to cut its forecast for the year.

Meanwhile, even as more employers may be calling workers back to the office, the return-to-office rate looks to have stalled, various studies have shown. Employers expect Manhattan office attendance won’t see any big jump for “the foreseeable future” and will inch up just slightly to 59%, or 73% of the pre-pandemic “normal,” a study released recently by The Partnership for New York City said.

SL Green is looking at selling some interest in its joint venture properties, including its marquee One Vanderbilt trophy tower by Grand Central Terminal.

Among already signed or completed investment deals, SL Green said late Wednesday it and its joint venture partners are selling the equity interests in the condominium units at 21 E. 66th St. for $40.6 million with the transaction expected to close this quarter.

It also has sold half of fashion designer Giorgio Armani’s first Manhattan residential offering at 760 Madison Ave. recently.

In other transactions, SL Green received $577.4 million from its investment partners after securing a temporary certificate of occupancy for the 1.4 million-square-foot One Madison Avenue office tower project.

It also converted its previous mezzanine debt investments in the fee interest at 625 Madison Ave. to a 90.43% ownership interest after a foreclosure auction.