Office Lease Offers for Startups in NYC: How to Judge One

Office lease offers for startups in NYC arrive as landlord proposals, and the asking rent is only the first line of each. A proposal also sets the free rent, the improvement allowance, the term, the yearly escalations and the security. To judge one, work out its effective rent: the total paid over the full term after the free months and the allowance are taken off, expressed per square foot per year. Then put two or three offers side by side on that one number. Nomad requests the proposals, builds the comparison and negotiates the one you choose into a letter of intent.

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Updated 2026-10-03 · Nomad Group

What a landlord's offer to a startup actually contains

An offer is a proposal: a page or two the landlord sends back when your broker asks it to price a deal on a floor.

Rent, per rentable square foot per year. This is the asking rent, and it is where the offer starts.
Free rent: months at the start of the term when nothing is due.
The improvement allowance: money toward the buildout, or work the landlord does itself.
Term, and the day rent begins.
Escalations: how the rent climbs each year.
Security: cash or a letter of credit, plus whatever personal guarantee is asked for.

Effective rent: the one number for comparing two offers

Asking rents cannot be compared directly, because the concessions around them differ.

Suppose Offer A is 4,000 square feet at $90 for three years with three months free, and Offer B is the same floor size at $84 with no free rent. In this example A's rent totals $1,080,000 less $90,000 for the free months, which is $82.50 a square foot a year, while B stays at $84. The offer with the higher asking rent is the cheaper one.

This short version leaves out escalations and the allowance, and a full comparison includes both. The floors in the block below ask between $75 and $100 a square foot, the band this example is drawn from.

What a startup can reasonably ask a landlord to move

Landlords protect the face rent, because it sets the comparison for the rest of the building, and give ground around it. A startup can reasonably ask about:

More free rent, particularly where the space needs work.
An allowance sized to a priced buildout, not a guess.
A fixed, capped escalation.
A smaller deposit, or one that steps down after a period of on-time payment.
Rights that cost the landlord little at signing: renewal, expansion and the right to sublet.

None of these is certain. What a landlord gives depends on the building, the term and the company's credit. How to negotiate an office lease ranks the terms by how readily they move.

What Nomad does once the proposals are in

Requests a proposal from the landlord of each finalist floor, on matching terms, so the answers can be compared.
Converts every response to effective rent over the term and sets them side by side.
Keeps a second floor in play, because a real alternative is the strongest position a tenant holds.
Negotiates the offer you choose into a letter of intent, then works the lease alongside your attorney.

On your search, we work for you. Nomad also offers agency leasing and owner representation. Ask whether any building on your list is one where we act for the owner. In most transactions the landlord pays the broker fee.

Floors asking $75 to $100 per square foot

Live from our listings · 6 of the 11, cheapest first

11 of the 46 floors with a published rent ask $75 to $100 per square foot per year, from 2,940 to 13,266 square feet.

Floors: 11
Sizes: 2,940-13,266 sq ft
Asking rent: $78-$98 / sq ft

Every available floor, with asking rents →

The full guide

This page is the short answer. The long one, with the numbers worked through, is here:

How many landlord proposals should a startup have before choosing?

Two or three. One offer gives you nothing to measure against, and the landlord knows it. With two real options in hand, you are choosing a floor and not accepting one.

Does a young company get weaker terms than an established one?

On security, usually. A company with little operating history will usually be asked for more security and a personal guarantee, because the landlord is judging whether the rent will keep coming. The amount is open to negotiation, and so is getting part of it back over time. Security deposits and letters of credit explains how.

Can Nomad review offers a startup collected on its own?

Yes. Bring the proposals, along with the name of whoever showed each floor and a copy of anything a landlord has signed or emailed. From those a broker can tell which terms remain open and how a broker would be paid on the deal. Sooner is better: the letter of intent is the last cheap moment to change a number.

What happens between accepting an offer and signing a lease?

The accepted terms go into a letter of intent, a short document that is mostly not binding. The landlord's attorney then drafts the lease and yours reviews it, usually over three to six weeks. During that stretch the broker's job is to make sure the lease says what the letter of intent said.

Talk to a broker

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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.

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