Searching for Office Space: Comparing the Listings on Your Shortlist Side by Side

The eight columns of the comparison sheet

• Rentable size: the square feet the rent is charged on.
• Asking rent: dollars per square foot per year, as the landlord quotes it.
• Monthly cost: the asking rent times the size, divided by twelve.
• Cost per person: the monthly cost divided by the headcount the floor holds.
• Condition: raw, pre-built or furnished, with a note on any work needed.
• Possession: the earliest date you could have the keys.
• Term: the shortest and the longest lease the landlord will discuss.
• Commute: train changes for the team, counted from their home stations.

The first four are arithmetic. The last four are where floors that look alike come apart.

Monthly cost and cost per person, worked through

Take an example. Say a floor of 3,500 square feet asks $70. The annual rent is $245,000, so the monthly cost is about $20,400. At 175 square feet per person the floor holds 20 people, which comes to about $1,020 a head each month before electricity.

Run the same sum on every row. The full cost guide carries the arithmetic on through the charges that sit above the rent, and rent per square foot explains the unit.

Why two floors at similar asking rents cost different amounts

• Usable space. What you can put desks on runs 15 to 25 percent below the rentable figure, and the gap differs from building to building. The floor with the smaller gap seats more people for the same rent.
• Electricity. Power is metered or billed separately, somewhere around $2 to $4 a year for each square foot, and where a floor falls in that range shows up every month.
• Condition. A furnished floor is ready in two to four weeks. A raw one needs a buildout, which commonly runs $50 to $150 a square foot before any landlord allowance, and 10 to 16 weeks during which you pay for space somewhere else.
• Term. A landlord offering 12 months is selling something different from one who wants five years, even at the same rate.

This is why the block below is held to a narrow band, between 60 and 80 dollars a square foot. With the rate nearly level, the other columns decide.

What Nomad prepares after a startup's tour day

After the tour day we send the sheet with every column filled in, from the listing and from what each landlord's agent confirmed on site, together with the notes each of you made. Where a figure is missing, such as the usable area, we ask the building for it. You rank the floors, and we add what we know of each landlord and how long the floor has been available. The sheet is written for you, not for the landlords: on your search, we work for you, and in most transactions the landlord pays the broker fee.

From the sheet to proposals on two or three floors

The sheet is for cutting, not for deciding. Its job is to bring the list down to the two or three floors that merit a second visit and a written proposal from the landlord. Write down why each of the others was dropped, so the question does not come back later. Once proposals arrive, the comparison stops being about asking rent and becomes about what each landlord will actually offer. How to tour office space covers the second visit.