How to Tour NYC Office Space: The Checklist and the Process

Book a tour, and what happens next

The fastest way to start is to book a tour: tell us headcount, timing and budget, a broker reaches out within the hour during business hours, and your first shortlist can be ready within 24 hours, with the size and address of every floor and the asking rent on nearly all of them. Nomad coordinates the tours themselves, transportation included, and follows up with a side-by-side comparison of the spaces you saw.

If you would rather build a first list yourself, the shortlist guide explains what to send and what comes back, and every listing on this site carries its size, its address and, for nearly every floor, its asking rent. Either way, the steps below are the same.

How many office spaces should we tour?

Fewer than you think, in a tighter order. A first round of four to six floors in one afternoon, split across two neighborhoods, teaches you what you actually prefer. Most searches see eight to twelve spaces over two or three afternoons before a shortlist declares itself. Past that, floors blur together and the comparison gets worse rather than better. The neighborhood framework explains why two adjacent neighborhoods in one afternoon beat five scattered across a week.

Then go back. Second visits to the two or three floors that survive the first round are where decisions get made: at a different time of day, with a tape measure, with the people who missed the first round, and ideally with a test fit in hand.

Who should come on the tour

Bring the people who will make the decision, so you do not tour twice for the same verdict, and keep the group small enough to move between buildings in one car or one subway ride. A typical group:

• The founder or executive who will sign, for the first round at least.
• Whoever runs operations or the office day to day, who will notice the pantry, the storage, the mail room and the freight elevator.
• Someone from engineering or IT for the floors that reach the second round, to judge power, data and where the network equipment goes.
• One skeptic, whose job is to find the problem the rest of the group is too excited to see.
• Your broker, who has seen the comparable floors and knows what each landlord has conceded before.

Save the full team for the second visit or the move itself. A tour with ten people becomes a field trip, and the landlord's agent learns more about your enthusiasm than you learn about the space.

Before you go: one page per floor

Prepare a single sheet for each floor so every space is judged on the same terms: the address and floor, the rentable square feet, the asking rent and the monthly cost it implies, how many desks it fits at about 175 square feet a person, its condition (raw, prebuilt or furnished), the earliest move-in date, and two or three questions you need answered there.

Agree on the must-haves before the first stop: the headcount the floor has to hold in 18 months, a monthly ceiling, a subway line, a move-in date. A floor that misses a must-have should take five minutes, not fifty.

What to check on an office tour: the on-site checklist

Photos show finishes. A tour is for the things photos hide. Walk every floor with the same list:

• Layout and the loss factor. Ask for the rentable and usable square feet, and look for columns, a deep floor plate or an awkward core that will cost desks. The loss factor entry explains the arithmetic.
• Light and outlook at the hours you work. A floor that glows at noon can be dim by four in the winter.
• Noise from the street, the neighbors, the building's own equipment and the floor above. Stand still for a minute with the door closed.
• Air-conditioning hours and after-hours rates. Ask when the system shuts off, what overtime air costs per hour, and whether the floor can take supplemental cooling for a server room.
• Elevators and freight. Count the cars, time a ride at a busy hour, and ask about the freight booking rules, which will matter for the buildout and the move.
• Internet. Ask which providers already serve the building and whether fiber reaches the floor; a building with a single provider is a cost and a risk.
• Power and electricity: how it is metered, what it costs, and whether the panel can take more if you need it.
• Restrooms, the pantry and any plumbing already in place, because moving wet work is expensive.
• The building: lobby hours and security, weekend access, bike storage, amenities, and who your neighbors would be.
• Transit and the walk. Time it from the subway lines your team actually uses.
• What it would take to make the floor yours: what can stay, what must go, and what a test fit would show.

This is the general list. For an AI or engineering-heavy team, the AI startup checklist is the specialist version, with power density, cooling and the walkthrough test for model teams. For warning signs in the building itself, see the building section of the lease red flags guide.

Second visits: what to do differently

The second visit is a working session, not a tour. Go at a different time of day from the first, ideally at the start or end of the workday. Bring the test fit or a rough layout and walk it: where the rooms go, where each team sits, where visitors wait. Measure the things that worry you. Ask to see the base building systems and, if the building allows it, talk to the building manager. And bring the people who missed the first round, because a decision they did not see will be relitigated later.

If two floors are close, ask your broker the questions that separate them: what the landlord has conceded on recent deals, how long the floor has been available, what the building's recent tenants spent on their buildouts, and how quickly the landlord approved their drawings.

Comparing floors after the tour

Score each floor the same evening, while the details are fresh, on the sheet you prepared. Then compare the cost the way a landlord cannot argue with: the monthly cost at the asking rent, adjusted for the loss factor, plus the buildout each floor needs and the time it takes. A cheaper floor that needs ten to sixteen weeks of construction can cost more than a prebuilt one that is ready in two to four, once the overlap rent and the buildout are counted.

Rank the top two or three, write down why the others were dropped, and share the ranking with everyone who toured. A short written ranking settles a debate that otherwise runs for weeks.

From tours to proposals

Once the shortlist is down to two or three floors, your broker asks each landlord for a proposal covering rent, term, free rent, the improvement allowance, escalations, security and the delivery date. Keeping two floors in play through this stage is the best leverage a tenant has. Compare the proposals on effective rent rather than asking rent, as the broker guide works through, then negotiate the best of them into a letter of intent and on to the lease.

Decisive teams reach a letter of intent within a couple of weeks of the first tour. The full timeline covers the lease and the buildout that follow, and the negotiation guide covers what moves once the proposals are on the table.