Office Space for Rent in the Financial District: Does It Fit Your Team?

Who rents in the Financial District now

Finance is still there, in a leaner form: funds, fintech, insurance and advisory firms that want the address without a trading floor. Around them a second group has arrived, drawn by the pricing: media companies, firms that work with government, and startups that found Midtown South too expensive.

What the newer tenants have in common is that they compared. They toured the loft districts, worked out the difference at their own headcount, and chose more space or a longer runway over a better-known zip code.

The commute test for a team of 30

Before any tour, we ask for the home stations of the people you employ and count transfers, not minutes. Downtown tends to win when the list looks like this:

• Brooklyn addresses, which are one or two stops from Fulton Street or Wall Street.
• New Jersey commuters, who ride PATH directly into the Oculus.
• Staten Island staff, who arrive by ferry at Whitehall.

It tends to lose when the list is heavy with Metro-North riders from Westchester and Connecticut. They arrive at Grand Central and face a second ride south, and teams like that usually stay near the terminal. A company relocating to New York has no list yet, so the question becomes where it expects to hire.

Cost per desk: what the budget buys downtown and in Midtown

Per-desk cost is the yearly rent divided by headcount. Suppose one floor asks $64 a square foot and another $85. At 5,250 square feet the difference is about $110,000 a year, or roughly $3,700 for each of 30 desks. That is the arithmetic our FiDi guide describes, and it is why downtown is worth pricing before signing anywhere else.

Midtown answers with other things: the corporate core, Metro-North at Grand Central, and a deep supply of full floors in towers. Midtown vs FiDi lines up both districts on live rents, while the block on this page shows floors from each that suit your size.

Do you need a broker downtown, and who pays one

You can call the listing agents yourself. Each one works for a building's owner and shows that owner's floors. On your search, we work for you: we survey the buildings that fit, subleases included, and negotiate against the landlord's side. As for the cost, in most transactions the landlord pays the broker fee. Put two questions to any broker you consider downtown, us included, before the search begins: what you would be asked to sign, and whether any part of the fee could fall to you.

Nomad also offers agency leasing and owner representation. Should one of the buildings we lease on an owner's behalf suit your brief, we would be acting for both parties, which New York permits only with informed consent from each. What the brokerage service covers has the detail.

Floors sized for about 30 people, FiDi's among them

The live block lists floors from an exact fit to a roomy one for about 30 people, each shown with its size and rent. The cut is by headcount across every district we cover, which puts the downtown floors next to Midtown and Midtown South ones of the same size. For the Financial District alone, open FiDi floors for 30 people.