4 World Trade Center: Office Space for Lease

The one floor on our book here

One space is available here through us, the highest floor among the four downtown floors we currently represent.

• Partial 44th Floor, 5,023 square feet, asking $115 per square foot per year. That is $577,645 a year and roughly $48,137 a month before electricity, and it seats about 29 people at the 175 square feet per person we plan to. A denser open plan takes 36; a layout heavy on private offices lands nearer 22.

Past the offices and conference rooms, our record adds a pantry, reception and open seating for 20 to 30, in bright column-free space with strong views and direct access to the Oculus. We hold a floor plan and our own photography, so a team can test its headcount against the real layout before touring. At 29 desks the rate works out to about $1,660 per seat per month, the figure worth comparing across floors.

What $115 means against the market

The four FiDi floors we represent run $60 to $115 per square foot per year with a median of $71.50, a few dollars under the $75 citywide median across our availability. This floor does not sit inside that range so much as define its ceiling: $115 is roughly 61% over the FiDi median and, because the city now sits above the neighborhood, about 53% over the citywide one.

Size and condition explain most of the spread. Among the downtown floors we hold above 5,000 square feet, the set reads $64 at 32 Old Slip for 6,997 square feet, $79 at 17 State Street for 6,606, and $115 here for 5,023. The closest match on our book by size, 60 Charlton Street in SoHo at 5,003 square feet, asks $120, so this is a tower-and-fit-out rate quoted downtown.

Our honest read is that it prices high for FiDi, and deliberately so. The floor costs about $55,800 a year more than 17 State Street and roughly $129,800 more than 32 Old Slip, in both cases for less space. What that premium buys is tower position and a layout you can occupy almost immediately. If neither matters to you, the same money funds a serious buildout on a cheaper downtown floor.

The submarket around the building

Transit is the strongest practical argument the address makes: 4/5, 2/3, R/W, 1 and J/Z at Fulton and Wall Street, PATH and the Oculus at the World Trade Center, and nearly every line within a ten-minute walk. Hiring across the boroughs and into New Jersey rarely stalls on the commute.

FiDi is Manhattan's original downtown, where post-2000 residential conversion built a real neighborhood around the towers rather than a district that empties at seven, and tenants trade proximity to Midtown for rents well below Midtown South at equivalent quality. A floor asking $115 where the FiDi median is $71.50 self-selects further, toward the team that wants a finished, client-facing front door on day one.

Within a short walk our book holds 17 State Street at 6,606 square feet, 32 Old Slip at 6,997 and 45 Broadway at 2,624, our whole current downtown availability at 15 to 40 desks. A requirement outside that band has to cross into Tribeca, Battery Park City or Seaport.

How to evaluate the floor, and what really sets the cost

A tour is worth the hour only if it settles what a listing cannot. Partially furnished needs a schedule attached, so walk the space with the plan in hand and get in writing which of the offices, the millwork and the furniture stay. A partial floor has a neighbor by definition, so establish where the demising line runs, and settle whether the offering is direct or a sublease, because that answer changes the term, the buildout money and who you negotiate with.

Treat 5,023 as a rentable figure rather than the area you can furnish. Manhattan loss factors typically run 15-25%, so the usable floor behind that number lands near 3,770 to 4,270 square feet once core, corridors and restrooms come out.

Base rent covers occupancy and, in most Manhattan leases, cleaning of the office areas. Electricity is billed on top at roughly $2 to $4 per square foot per year, about $840 to $1,675 a month here, while internet, insurance, overtime HVAC and the tax and operating escalations ride separately. The security package, usually a letter of credit behind a good guy guarantee, is more negotiable than most tenants test.

Blended rent across the term is what you are really signing for. An unnegotiated 3% escalation turns $115 into about $129 by the fifth year and averages near $122 over five, while three months free on a sixty-month term takes roughly 5% off the deal. A furnished prebuilt needs little improvement allowance, so the leverage moves toward free rent, the escalation cap and the restoration clause.

How Nomad works on this floor

We represent tenants and never landlords, so we never sit on both sides of the table here, and the size, the asking rent and the approximate monthly are published rather than held back for a phone call.

Touring is easy to arrange: the Partial 44th Floor can usually be seen inside the same week, and we will walk 17 State Street and 32 Old Slip on the same trip so $115 gets judged against something. Having run 300+ buildouts across New York, we can also price what changing the delivered layout would cost, usually the calculation that decides between a finished tower floor and a cheaper raw one a few blocks east.