Office Space for Startups in NYC: Where They Rent in Manhattan, and What

The five startup office options, before the neighborhoods

• Virtual office: an address and meeting rooms by the hour, with no desks.
• Coworking: desks or a room on a shared floor, at roughly $800 to $1,400 a desk per month.
• Sublease: another tenant's built space for the rest of its lease, usually below direct asking rents.
• Furnished or prebuilt floor: your own space, ready within weeks of signing, often for one to three years.
• Direct lease with a buildout: a floor made to your plan, on a longer term, with landlord money toward construction.

Which neighborhood suits which startup

• NoMad and Flatiron. Boutique prewar buildings and loft conversions at the heart of the venture-backed cluster, with Broadway, Lexington Avenue and Sixth Avenue trains close by. The usual product is a full floor on a direct lease, or a furnished floor on a shorter one, for teams from Series A on.
• SoHo. Cast-iron lofts with high ceilings, reached by four subway trunk lines. The address does brand and recruiting work for design-led and consumer companies. Direct floors and subleases both exist here.
• Union Square. The Lexington Avenue and Broadway lines and the L meet at 14th Street, which puts most of the city one transfer away. It suits a team at any stage whose people live on many different lines.
• Midtown and Grand Central. Towers with large floors and building services, and Metro-North at the terminal. Startups come here for client meetings and for leaders who commute by rail.

Pick by commute first. List the home stations of the team and count the transfers to each neighborhood. How to choose an office neighborhood explains the method.

How many people a startup fits in 1,000 square feet

Five or six, on the standard planning figure. Plan on 175 square feet per person, a rentable number that counts each person's share of meeting rooms, the pantry and corridors, so 1,000 square feet holds about five people comfortably. A dense open plan at about 140 square feet each fits seven. A layout with many private offices, at about 225 each, fits four.

Work the other way for a search and multiply headcount by 175. A team of 12 needs about 2,100 square feet, and a team of 25 about 4,375.

How long a startup lease runs

A private floor can be taken for as little as 12 months. Two and three years are more common, and a shorter term costs more per square foot. A conventional direct lease with a buildout runs five to ten years, because the landlord recovers its construction money over the term. A sublease runs only as long as the first tenant's own lease has left, commonly one to three years. Month-to-month terms belong almost entirely to coworking and virtual offices.

Why SoHo's floors are shown here, and where the other hubs are

This page needs a single neighborhood to make the options concrete, and SoHo is the example. The block below lists what we have there, with sizes and asking rents. It is not a ranking of neighborhoods.

The other hubs carry their own live floors: NoMad, Flatiron, Union Square and Midtown. Our published listings are all in Manhattan. We list no floors in Brooklyn or any other borough, so a team set on being outside Manhattan needs a different source.