153 West 27th Street: Office Space for Lease

The two floors on our book here

Two suites sit on our book at this address, close enough in size to look interchangeable on a spreadsheet: 2,978 square feet on the third floor against 2,937 on the eleventh. Both are partial floors rather than whole-floor takes, so each shares its floor with another tenant.

• Partial 3rd Floor: 2,978 square feet, $44 per square foot per year, about $10,919 a month, roughly 17 desks at 175 square feet per person.
• Partial 11th Floor: 2,937 square feet, $60 per square foot per year, about $14,685 a month, also roughly 17 desks.

Our record for the eleventh floor lists it furnished and wired, with hardwood floors, exposed ceilings and a pantry, and we hold a floor plan and a Matterport walkthrough for it. The third floor carries none of that in our file, a silence that makes delivery condition the first question to put to ownership. Seventeen desks is a planning number and not a ceiling: a denser open plan takes about 21, and private offices bring it closer to 13.

Reading the two asking rents

Chelsea runs $44 to $64 per square foot per year across the nine floors we represent there, median $56, about 22% under the $75 citywide median on our book. The bottom of that range sits in this building, and the top sits four dollars higher on the partial tenth at 151 West 26th Street. The third floor at $44 is the cheapest foot we carry in the neighborhood, matched only by the entire eleventh at 237 West 27th Street, and roughly 39% below the city median, while the eleventh here at $60 sits four dollars over the Chelsea median and $12 under the city's, which prices it at market for what it is.

The $16 spread comes to $45,188 a year, about $3,766 a month, or $2,658 per desk annually at 17 desks. Priced that way the choice usually resolves itself: if fitting out and furnishing the third floor costs more across the term than the spread does, the eleventh is the cheaper floor despite the larger number. Neither figure is what gets signed. Taking rent lands below asking once free rent, improvement money and escalation caps are counted, though a floor priced at the bottom of its submarket leaves less room.

The blocks around the building

Transit for this submarket reads A/C/E, 1, F/M at 14th and 23rd, and we will not claim more than that about the commute from this door. Walk it from whichever line your team actually rides. Chelsea's office stock is the loft corridor between Sixth and Seventh Avenues in the mid-20s, garment-era buildings turned open, high-ceilinged floors over the gallery decades, and the tenants who take them are tech, media and design teams that wanted Flatiron's character with more room in the budget.

The nine floors we carry in Chelsea span 2,937 to 18,668 square feet, about 17 to 107 desks, and these two suites are the smallest of them. The next step up is 3,500 feet at $55 on the partial fourth at 115 West 30th Street, then 7,047 feet at $59 on the entire ninth at 104 West 27th Street, 7,158 feet at $44 on the entire eleventh at 237 West 27th Street, 9,000 feet at $64 on the partial tenth at 151 West 26th Street, and 9,500 feet at $50 on the entire seventh at 127 West 26th Street. A team of 17 shopping Chelsea on our book is shopping this building or the partial fourth at 115 West 30th Street.

What a tour and a lease have to settle

Both square footages are rentable numbers, and rentable area in New York includes a share of the building's common space rather than the floor you occupy. Loss factors of 15-25% are ordinary, so 2,978 rentable feet can mean 2,230 to 2,530 usable, which across a 17-desk plan is the difference between comfortable and tight. Ask for the measurement basis in writing, and on a partial floor ask whether the demising line has been built or is still a line on a plan.

• Delivery condition: what ownership builds versus what you inherit, and on the furnished eleventh floor, which pieces convey, on a schedule attached to the lease.
• Services and access: HVAC zoning and who controls it, whether electric is submetered or billed on a rentable-foot formula (budget $2 to $4 a foot), cleaning, after-hours air conditioning, and freight hours.

Term length drives the rest, since improvement money and free months are funded out of a longer commitment. Escalations run off a base year worth more argument than most tenants give it, security is usually cash or a letter of credit worth several months of rent with a good guy guarantee behind it, and a restoration clause is expensive to discover late.

How we work on this building

We act for tenants and for nobody else. No owner at this address pays us, which is why both asking rents sit on this page in plain view instead of behind a form, and why the thin file on the third floor is printed here rather than smoothed over.

Either floor can be toured, usually inside the same week, and we send the eleventh floor's plan and walkthrough ahead so the hour on site goes to questions. Seeing both back to back is the fastest way to put a price on condition, and we will set the other five Chelsea floors beside them. From there we run the letter of intent, the lease negotiation and, if you want it, the buildout, on the back of 300+ buildouts and 2M+ square feet delivered in New York. A furnished floor can be occupied two to four weeks after signing; a custom fit-out runs 10-16 weeks.