Where to Find Office Space in NYC for a High-Growth Startup: Four Sources

Where to find office space for a startup that is growing fast comes down to four sources, and only one of them is a website. Published listings show what landlords market openly. The wider direct market holds floors that sit on no single list. Subleases come from companies that shrank or moved, usually cheaper and faster, and taken largely as they are. Off-market floors reach brokers before any public site. A search for 25 to 40 people should draw on all four. Nomad pulls them into one shortlist, and a first shortlist can be ready within 24 hours.

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.

Send me floors for 30 people

Updated 2026-10-03 · Nomad Group

Published listings: where a post-Series A search starts

A listing that shows its size, address and asking rent lets you set a budget and a size before you speak to anyone. That is what published listings are good for: a benchmark, and a first list of floors worth touring. Every available floor on our book sits on a single page, and the block below shows the ones that suit about 30 people.

Their limit is coverage. No published list is the whole market, ours included.

The wider direct market and floors that are not yet marketed

The direct market is every floor a landlord has to lease, and no site carries every building. Beyond that sit floors a landlord has not advertised yet and space coming back before a lease expires. These tend to circulate among brokers who are active in a neighborhood before they appear in public.

This is why a list is where a search begins and not where it ends. A broker's survey covers the direct market building by building and asks about what is coming.

Subleases: built space from companies that changed plans

A sublease is another company's floor for the rest of its lease. It is usually cheaper and faster than a direct deal, often furnished, and taken largely as it is. For a team that expects to look different in two years, a short remaining term can be an advantage.

The limits come with the paperwork. The term is whatever is left, your rights are capped by the original lease, and the landlord has to consent, which can take about four weeks. The sublease playbook covers what to check.

Size the search for the hiring plan

Allow 175 square feet per person, then add 15 to 25 percent for the hires you expect. Thirty people need about 5,250 square feet on day one and roughly 6,000 to 6,600 with that margin. The alternative to carrying empty desks is a right of first offer on adjacent space, written into the lease. Planning an office from Series A to Series B works through both.

How Nomad turns four sources into one shortlist

Send a brief: headcount now and in eighteen months, the date, and a monthly budget. A broker reaches out within the hour during business hours. The shortlist that follows puts direct floors and sublease options on one page, each with its size and rent on a common basis, so a sublease can be judged against a direct floor line by line. From there, an afternoon of tours covers three to five of them.

On your search, we work for you. Whichever of the four sources a floor comes from, in most transactions the landlord pays the broker fee. A sublease is the usual exception, where the fee tends to fall to the company handing the floor on.

Floors that fit a team of 30

Live from our listings · 6 of the 22, smallest first

A 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

Every available floor, filterable by size →

The full guide

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

Why not search the public listing sites and skip the broker?

You can start there, and you should. What the sites miss are the subleases and unmarketed floors that are usually spoken for before they are posted. A search built only on public listings sees part of the market and negotiates without knowing what else was possible.

Is a sublease a sound choice for a team that may double?

As a bridge, often. It suits a horizon of one to three years and a team that can live with someone else's layout. It rarely comes with renewal or expansion rights, so if the plan says you will double inside the term, either take a sublease large enough to hold the growth or choose a direct lease with a right to expand. Have your attorney read the original lease, not a summary.

Does Nomad claim floors that no one else can show?

No. Unmarketed floors move through the brokers who are active in a building's neighborhood, and we are among them, not alone. What we add is one shortlist that sets those floors beside the published ones. Our own listings are a curated book and not the whole city, and where nothing fits we say so.

Which source is fastest when desks are needed this quarter?

Furnished and pre-built floors: the wait between signing and sitting down is usually two to four weeks. A furnished sublease can be nearly as quick when the landlord's consent comes promptly. A floor that has to be built to order adds 10 to 16 weeks, typically, so it belongs to a search with more time.

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

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