SoHo Office Space for Lease: What Nomad Handles From Shortlist to Buildout

Before signing a SoHo lease: shortlist, tours, proposals, negotiation

• Shortlist. From your headcount, date and budget, a first shortlist can be ready within 24 hours, covering listed floors, subleases and space owners have not yet advertised.
• Tours. One afternoon, usually three to five stops, with a test fit ordered on the ones you like.
• Proposals. We request written terms from each landlord and restate them on a single basis: total cost over the term, after free rent and the improvement allowance.
• Lease. We negotiate the letter of intent, then hold the lease to it while your attorney reviews the legal terms.

SoHo has few large floors at any moment, so for 50 people it is worth adding full floors in neighboring loft districts to the search, as a comparison and as a fallback.

Weighing one SoHo floor against another

• Light. Cast-iron fronts give big windows at the street and the rear, and the middle of a deep floor can still be dim. Look at where the desks will sit.
• Shape. Fifty desks need a floor that is not broken up by columns or a core in the wrong place. The test fit answers this.
• The street. Broadway brings foot traffic and noise, while Greene, Mercer and Wooster are calmer.
• The building. Elevator count, air conditioning, and how the owner has handled past alterations.
• Signage and entrance. What the lease permits, given landmark limits on the exterior.

After signing: the buildout, and landmark review

Nomad's construction management team coordinates the design, the city filings, the landlord's approvals, the contractor and the furniture. A custom buildout typically takes 10 to 16 weeks. Because the brokers and the builders are one firm, design can begin while the lease is still being negotiated.

In SoHo, add landmark review. Exterior changes and some interior work in the historic district need approval from the city's landmarks agency, and that can add two to four weeks compared with an unprotected building. Get the building's record of past alterations in writing before you commit to a date. Your architect and attorney should confirm what your project has to file.

Does using a broker cost a SoHo tenant more?

Usually not. In most transactions the landlord pays the broker fee, with the commission terms fixed deal by deal. Before the first SoHo building is shown, have any broker, us included, spell out what it wants signed and what, if anything, would be billed to you.

On your search, we work for you. Nomad also offers agency leasing and owner representation. If a building we lease for an owner comes up, that is dual agency, which in New York requires informed consent from both sides, so ask us about any address on your list.

Floors for about 50 people, in SoHo and beyond

The block below shows floors on our book sized for about 50 people, anywhere in Manhattan. SoHo floors of that size are scarce, so when none is on the market the block holds full floors in other neighborhoods, the loft districts to the north among them. The SoHo hub has every floor in the neighborhood, and floors for 50 people in SoHo keeps to SoHo and takes in floors a little under the planning size.