Office Leasing in NYC When Your Lease Is Expiring: When to Start

Office leasing for a company whose lease is expiring starts from one date, the expiration, and counts backward. If the next floor has to be built out to your plan, allow four to six months between the first tour and working desks. With a pre-built floor the same stretch is six to eight weeks. Put the weeks of searching in front and a margin behind, and the honest start is nine to twelve months before the lease ends, with a first look at the market earlier still. Starting then keeps two choices alive, renewing and moving. Nomad searches for alternatives while your landlord's renewal terms are on the table.

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 60 people

Updated 2026-10-03 · Nomad Group

Counting backward from the expiration date

Write the expiration date at the bottom of a page and work upward.

The move and the handback of the old space: plan some weeks of overlap, so nothing hangs on a single weekend.
Buildout or move-in: 10 to 16 weeks for a custom buildout, two to four weeks for a furnished or pre-built floor.
The lease: three to six weeks of drafts between the attorneys.
The offer and the letter of intent: one to two weeks.
The search and the tours: two to four weeks when the brief is clear.

Added up with a custom buildout, that is the four to six months above, and it assumes decisions made in days. How long it takes to get an office goes through each phase.

Why an early start keeps renewing and moving both possible

A landlord prices a renewal against the chance that you leave. Eighteen months out you can still leave, and the landlord knows it. Six months out, a move with a buildout no longer fits the calendar, and the renewal offer reflects that.

A renewal option adds a deadline of its own. It usually has to be exercised by written notice inside a fixed window before the lease ends, and missing it usually ends the right. Have your attorney confirm that date first. Whether to stay or go is a separate calculation, and renew or relocate works through it.

What Nomad does for a tenant with an expiring lease

A market survey of floors that fit the company as it is now, not as it was when the old lease was sized.
Tours of three to five alternatives in one afternoon.
Proposals from the landlords of the strongest alternatives, set beside your current landlord's renewal terms on one basis: cost over the whole term, with free rent, allowances and the one-time costs of moving counted.
Then the negotiation, of the renewal or of a new lease, whichever the comparison favors.

We work for you on your search. Because Nomad also offers agency leasing and owner representation, ask us, as you would any firm, whether we lease any building on your list for its owner.

Staying past expiration: what holdover means

Holdover is what a lease calls a tenant still in its space once the term has run out and nothing new has been signed. New York office leases commonly bill it at one and a half to two times the final rent. Holdover explains the clause, and your attorney should confirm what your own lease says.

How a relocation search begins

Send a short brief: the expiration date, headcount today and the number you expect, a monthly budget, and whether staying is on the table. A broker reaches out within the hour during business hours. The floors below are sized for about 60 people, which at 175 square feet per person is about 10,500 rentable square feet. In most transactions the landlord pays the broker fee.

Floors that fit a team of 60

Live from our listings · 6 of the 8, smallest first

A team of 60 plans on about 10,500 square feet at 175 a person. 8 floors on our book sit in the range that fits, 10,500 to 18,900 square feet, asking $56 to $200 per square foot per year on the 6 with a published rent.

Floors: 8
Sizes: 10,517-18,668 sq ft
Asking rent: $56-$200 / 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:

Our lease ends in eight months. Is that too late to move?

No, but it narrows the choice. Eight months fits a move to a pre-built or furnished floor comfortably, and a custom buildout only if the search and the lease go quickly. Tell us the date first and we sort the shortlist by what can realistically be ready.

Should we tell our landlord we are looking at other buildings?

You do not need to announce it, but a landlord who believes you can leave negotiates differently from one who believes you cannot. Touring real alternatives and holding a real proposal is what makes that belief true. We run the market check quietly and open the renewal conversation when you are ready.

Is a pre-built floor realistic for a company of 60?

It can be. Where a pre-built floor exists at this size it takes the buildout off the calendar, and the trade is a layout you did not design. Ask for both kinds on the shortlist and compare the dates.

What should we check in our current lease before starting?

Two dates and two clauses: the expiration, the window for exercising any renewal option, the notice provisions, and the restoration clause, which says what you must put back before handing over the space. Your attorney can confirm each. Together they set the real deadline for everything else.

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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