Move-In Ready Office Space for Startups: Why It Usually Fits, and When It Does Not

What a startup gets when a floor is called move-in ready

The label covers several products. A prebuilt suite is one the landlord constructed before any tenant signed, usually a pantry, a few meeting rooms and an open area for desks. A furnished floor adds the desks and chairs, often left behind by a company that moved on. Plug and play means the cabling is live as well.

Listings use these words loosely, so ask what will physically be there on day one. The prebuilt glossary entry explains how a lease treats each one.

The startup case: a shorter wait and cash kept in the bank

A young company pays for delay twice. It pays rent somewhere else while the new office is under construction, and it pays in the attention of whichever founder ends up running the project. A finished floor removes the construction phase, and with it the permits, the long-lead orders and the weekly decisions on site.

Then there is the capital. Our buildout guide puts a custom office at $50 to $150 a square foot of construction, and new furniture at $2,000 to $4,000 a desk. A landlord allowance covers part of the construction and usually none of the furniture or cabling. On a finished floor someone else has already made that outlay, and you pay it back gradually in the rent instead of out of the round you just raised.

Move-in ready or coworking for an early team

Coworking is faster still: days, and the only paperwork is a membership agreement. In Manhattan it runs roughly $800 to $1,400 a desk each month, and the bill rises with every hire. Under about 15 people it is usually the cheaper route overall. From about 20 up, a floor of your own tends to win per person, and it brings your own door, your own meeting rooms and a lease in place of a membership.

Flexible lease or coworking works the numbers at several team sizes.

The counter-case: when a startup should build its own office

Move-in ready space is a compromise, and three situations tip against it.

• You will stay long enough for construction to pay for itself. A landlord folds the cost of a prebuilt into the rent, so over a long term a raw floor with free rent and an improvement allowance tends to cost less.
• The layout has to change. Labs, heavy power, an unusual ratio of rooms to desks: once you are moving walls you have handed back the speed you came for, and a restoration clause may make you pay to put them back.
• The office is part of the brand. A company that recruits or sells on its space wants its own plan, and a standard suite will not carry that.

If any of those describes you, read how fast a custom office can be built before ruling one out. The floors below are the furnished and prebuilt ones on our book.