Test Fit: NYC Office Leasing, Explained

How a test fit works in a New York lease

The mechanics are simple. Once you have a shortlist, the landlord's architect (or your own, if you want independent eyes) takes the floor plate and your program of head count, room mix, phone booths, and pantry, and draws the office you would actually build. This matters more in New York because the listed square footage is rentable, a figure that folds in a share of lobbies, corridors, and mechanical space, while the drawing shows the usable floor with columns, core, and window line exactly where they sit.

Landlords often fund one per serious space, which is why we treat the test fit as a standard ask rather than a favor. The timing is fixed in our process: after the shortlist, before the LOI. A test fit ordered after you sign a letter of intent protects nothing, because by then the leverage has moved across the table.

A worked example: two finalists, one plate wins

Picture your final two options at asking rents near the citywide median on our book of $75 per square foot per year. On a spreadsheet the larger floor looks safer, since more square footage should mean more desks. Then the test fits come back. The larger plate carries a deep core and awkward column spacing, so whole runs of desks disappear into circulation, while the smaller plate holds the identical program with a conference room to spare.

That reversal is the point. Every square foot you decline to lease at $72 per square foot per year stays in your budget every year of the term, and on a multi-year lease that difference compounds before you have negotiated a single concession. Spreadsheet math cannot see a column. A test fit can.

What is negotiable, and what we push on

Almost everything around the test fit is negotiable, starting with who pays. On a tenant-side mandate we push a consistent set of points:

• The landlord funds the drawing for any space under genuine consideration; producing it is their cost of competing for your tenancy.
• The layout follows your program, not the building's standard marketing plan.
• You get iterations. A first pass that almost works should become a second pass that does, and a landlord who resists revising the drawing is previewing the buildout conversation.
• The findings feed the work letter and the improvement allowance, because a plate that needs more construction to reach the same layout should carry economics that acknowledge it.

None of this obligates you. The test fit stays a planning tool until the lease or work letter says otherwise, and we keep it that way deliberately.

The traps that cost tenants money

The expensive mistakes cluster in predictable places. A test fit drawn only by the landlord's architect can flatter the floor, with benching packed tighter than your people will tolerate and circulation trimmed below what a working office needs, so read the density skeptically and have your own architect pressure-test it. A drawing that ignores the physical floor, the columns, the mechanical closets, the low beam over the future conference room, manufactures confidence in a layout that cannot be built.

The quieter trap is leasing on rentable square feet alone. Two floors with identical rentable figures can hold materially different head counts once loss factor and geometry have their say, and the tenant who skips the test fit discovers this after signing, when it costs the most to learn. Watch for layouts that could never be approved as drawn, since rooms still need code-compliant egress and pantries need the building's mechanical cooperation. A test fit is a sketch, not a permit, so confirm the buildable reality on the specific lease with your own design team.