Empire State Building: Office Space for Lease

The floor available in the building today

One space sits on our book here, a partial floor rather than a whole one, and it comes already built.

• Partial 43rd Floor: 5,621 rentable square feet at $90 per square foot per year, $505,890 annually, about $42,158 a month before electricity, roughly 32 desks.

Our record describes a brand new prebuilt with 6 windowed offices, 2 conference rooms, open workspace for 18 and an open pantry, eligible for ESRT Turnkey Suites services, which the record defines as full scale architectural, furniture and IT services from Empire State Realty Trust. Read those numbers carefully, because the plan as drawn seats about 24 people while 32 is the planning figure at 175 square feet a head. You are buying the layout in front of you, not the arithmetic, and a team of 32 will be reworking that plan or living tighter than the sheet suggests.

Being a partial floor brings a demising line and a shared landing with it, both of which sit inside the rentable number you pay on. Our record carries no floor plan for this space, so the plate comes from the tour rather than from a PDF sent ahead.

Reading the $90 ask

Four NoMad floors sit on our book asking $57 to $90 with a median of $62, and this one defines the top of that range at roughly 45 percent above the submarket's middle. NoMad as a whole prices about 17 percent under the $75 median across the 49 floors we represent in eleven New York submarkets, so this floor is priced against a different market than its neighbors.

The comparison that matters is on the same footprint. The entire 7th at 22 West 27th Street is 6,000 square feet at $57, about $28,500 a month, which is 379 square feet more for $13,658 a month less, some $819,000 across five years. Step up in size and 1235 Broadway's entire 4th is 9,500 feet at $62, about $49,083, furnished and wired with a Matterport walkthrough on the page; the extra $6,925 a month over this floor buys 3,879 more square feet. The entire 12th at 1239 Broadway is 12,500 feet at the same $62, about $64,583.

What the premium buys is a floor somebody else already built and the smallest plate in the submarket, since our other three NoMad floors start at 6,000 square feet. That is a real product for a team of two dozen that does not want a construction calendar, and a poor trade for a team that wants area.

The submarket around the address

Transit for NoMad reads N/R/W, 6, F/M at 23rd and 28th, the submarket's service rather than anything specific to this entrance, and it is why these blocks work for teams hiring from both sides of the river.

Our NoMad inventory runs 5,621 to 12,500 square feet, roughly 32 to 71 desks, and it splits cleanly in two: three floors clustered at $57 to $62 and this one at $90. There is no middle. A tenant who wants a finished floor pays the top of the submarket for it; a tenant who will build pays the bottom.

Flatiron, Murray Hill and Chelsea all start within a few blocks and all three carry inventory on our book, so a search anchored on this address should be run across four submarkets at once. For a sense of what this footprint costs elsewhere, the penthouse at 503-511 Broadway in SoHo is 5,552 square feet at $125, about $57,833 a month, $15,675 more for 69 fewer feet.

What a prebuilt changes, and what to test on the tour

A prebuilt shifts the money and the calendar. Ownership has already spent the construction capital, so there is no architect to hire, no DOB filing to wait on and no four month buildout in front of your occupancy date, and in exchange the improvement allowance usually thins toward nothing because it is already standing on the floor. The trade is fit: 6 offices and 2 conference rooms is a ratio you inherit rather than choose.

Get the ESRT Turnkey Suites eligibility in writing before it does any work in your budget. Establish what the program covers on this floor, what it costs, and whether it is priced inside the $90 or billed on top. A named program in a listing is a starting point for that conversation, not an answer to it.

The 5,621 is rentable, not usable. Loss factor commonly runs 15-25%, which puts usable area near 4,778 at the good end and 4,216 at the bad, a swing of 562 square feet, and on a partial floor the share of landing and corridor inside that number is worth asking about directly. Confirm HVAC hours and after-hours cost, freight and building hours for the move-in, which carriers reach the riser, and whether the pantry and restrooms are sized for 32 people rather than the 24 the plan draws.

Base rent is the smaller half of the question. Electric is normally submetered or billed as an inclusion at $2 to $4 per square foot a year, $11,242 to $22,484 here, cleaning scope varies and rewards reading, tax and operating escalations run over a negotiable base year, and base rent steps 2.5% to 3% annually. Three percent on $505,890 adds $15,177 in year two alone.

How Nomad works on a floor like this

We represent tenants and only tenants, here and on every other floor we carry, so there is no version of this deal where the owner is also paying us. Asking rents get published on every page we run, because a tenant who knows the number before the tour negotiates from a better position.

A tour can usually be arranged inside the same week, and we bring the three cheaper NoMad floors along so the premium gets argued with the alternatives in the room. On a prebuilt the negotiation runs through the concessions rather than the headline: one month of free rent here is worth $42,158, each month of security is the same figure committed, escalation caps decide what year seven costs, and a good guy guarantee limits a principal to what is owed through the day the keys go back. If the floor works we run the letter of intent, the lease and any fit-out, with 300+ buildouts across 2M+ square feet in New York behind us.