Market Analysis for an NYC Office Lease: Five Steps, in Order
A market analysis for leasing a Manhattan office is a procedure with five steps, and each one leaves you with something on paper. Write the requirement down and you have a line of numbers. Look up the rent ranges and you have a short list of neighborhoods. Gather deals like yours and you have a price for the space. Put each offer on net effective rent and you have one figure per floor. Note what would move each landlord and you have an opening offer. A growing company can do the first two alone in a day. Steps three and five are where a broker's deal book comes in.
Rather have a broker answer it for your team?Tell us team size and timing. A broker reaches out within the hour during business hours.
Run these steps on my searchUpdated 2026-10-03 · Nomad Group
Step one: the requirement, in numbers
Write down four things: how many people you have, how many you expect 12 to 18 months from now, your move-in date, and what you can spend each month. Multiply the future headcount by 175 square feet a person. For a company heading to 30 people that is 5,250 rentable square feet.
What you hold afterward: one line that any landlord or broker can respond to. The block below shows what a 30-person requirement finds on our book, and the calculator runs the sum for any other size.
Step two: the ranges, by neighborhood
Look up what each neighborhood asks in the live rent table. Then read the availability figure for that submarket in the market report. Where more space is on offer, a tenant has more room.
What you hold afterward: a few neighborhoods where your budget and your size both fit, and a first sense of where a landlord will be more willing to deal.
Step three: comparable deals
Collect recent leases close to yours in size, term and building class, in the neighborhoods from step two. The large leases in the news set the mood of the market; they do not price a floor for 30 people.
What you hold afterward: a price for space like yours, after concessions. This is the step a tenant cannot finish alone, because effective rents on signed deals are rarely public. Brokers see them in their own books.
Step four: every offer on net effective rent
When proposals arrive, convert each to one figure: total rent over the term with escalations, less free rent and the improvement allowance, divided by the rentable square feet and the years.
What you hold afterward: one number per offer, on which a higher asking rent with a generous package can beat a lower one with nothing attached.
Step five: the leverage, spent in the letter of intent
Write down what would move each landlord: high availability in the submarket, a floor that has been empty a while, a sublease you could take instead, your own flexibility on dates.
What you hold afterward: an opening offer. Put it in the letter of intent. A number there moves with a sentence; in lease drafts the same change costs weeks. The letter of intent explains the document.
Floors that fit a team of 30
Live from our listings · 6 of the 22, smallest firstA team of 30 plans on about 5,250 square feet at 175 a person. 22 floors on our book sit in the range that fits, 5,250 to 9,450 square feet, asking $43 to $125 per square foot per year on the 21 with a published rent.
- Floors
- 22
- Sizes
- 5,250-9,000 sq ft
- Asking rent
- $43-$125 / sq ft
- 30 West 21st Street, Penthouse floor 5,250 sq ft $115/sq ft Flatiron about 30 people
- Empire State Building, Partial 43rd Floor 5,621 sq ft $90/sq ft NoMad about 32 people
- 60 East 42nd Street, Partial 13th Floor 5,772 sq ft $72/sq ft Grand Central about 33 people
- 22 West 27th Street, Entire 7th Floor 6,000 sq ft $57/sq ft NoMad about 34 people
- 520 Madison Avenue, Partial 21st Floor 7,092 sq ft $125/sq ft Midtown about 41 people
- 237 West 27th Street, Entire 11th Floor 7,158 sq ft $44/sq ft Chelsea about 41 people
The full guide
This page is the short answer. The long one, with the numbers worked through, is here:
Related topics
- Market Analysis for a Startup's Office Lease: The Tenant's Version, Not the Investor's
- Commercial Real Estate Market Analysis: The Open Data Behind a Nomad Search
- A Market Analysis Template for Comparing Office Lease Offers on One Page
- Real Estate Market Research: What an Analyst Reports and What a Broker Knows
Which steps can a growing company do without a broker?
The first two, fully: the requirement and the ranges use your own numbers and published ones. Step four is arithmetic once offers exist. Steps three and five depend on deal knowledge, and that is where a broker comes in. A broker reaches out within the hour during business hours, and a first shortlist can be ready within 24 hours.
Does the order of the steps matter?
Yes. Without a requirement, rent ranges are just reading. Without ranges, you cannot tell which comps are relevant. And leverage written down before the offers are normalized gets spent on the wrong floor.
How long before a move should a company start the analysis?
Count back from the move-in date. Pre-built space means six to eight weeks from first tour to occupancy, and a floor built to order means four to six months. The analysis has to be finished before that first tour, and steps one and two take a day.
What does the finished analysis look like?
One page: the requirement at the top, a row for each candidate floor with its net effective rent, and a note on leverage beside each. It is a working paper for a negotiation, not a report.
Talk to a broker
Want this answered for your team?
Tell us three things: team size, timing, budget. A first shortlist can be ready within 24 hours, with the asking rent on every floor that publishes one.
- Within the houra broker reaches out during business hours, no automated triage
- On your sidewe work for you on your search, and the landlord usually pays our fee
- Open pricingasking rent published for 46 of 49 floors, size and address for all
- 300+ officesdelivered in New York, 2M+ sq ft leased
Or call 646-688-3158
