Midtown vs NoMad: Office Space Compared

The $63 gap and what actually sits behind it

Midtown's median asking rent across the floors we represent is $79 per square foot per year and NoMad's is $62. That $17 is about 27%, and the pair straddles the $75 citywide median across our book, Midtown roughly 5% above it and NoMad roughly 17% below.

Midtown asks $79 to $130, a fifty-one dollar range, because the book there runs from a large Broadway plate up to partial floors on Madison and Park Avenue where the address does most of the work. NoMad asks $57 to $90, and two of its four floors carry the identical $62. One submarket prices building by building, the other prices as a neighborhood.

Read the Midtown median with one caution: it rests on three published rents, since the entire 10th floor at 45 West 45th Street carries no posted number, and the $125 at 520 Madison Avenue pulls it upward. A tenant taking the cheapest Midtown floor on our book, the entire 26th at 1700 Broadway, pays $79, eleven dollars under NoMad's $90 ceiling rather than sixty-three dollars over its median.

What we hold in each, and who each can house

Availability settles most of these searches before rent gets a vote, and the two books are shaped differently.

• Midtown: 4 floors, 7,092 to 19,097 square feet, roughly 41 to 109 desks at the 175 square feet per person we plan against, asking $79 to $130.
• NoMad: 3 floors, 6,000 to 12,500 square feet, roughly 34 to 71 desks, asking $57 to $62.

Those two lines decide the matter at either end. A team of thirty-five has one option here, in NoMad, since our Midtown book starts at 7,092 square feet. A team of eighty-five has one, in Midtown, at 277 Park Avenue's 19,097 square feet. The genuine head to head lives in the 41 to 71 desk band.

One pairing shows what the premium buys. The partial 21st floor at 520 Madison Avenue is 7,092 square feet at $125, or $886,500 a year. The entire 12th floor at 1239 Broadway is 12,500 square feet at $62, or $775,000. The Midtown floor costs $111,500 more and gives up 5,408 square feet, close to thirty desks.

All three NoMad floors are entire floors and three of the four in Midtown are as well, so a tenant that wants the whole floor has candidates on both sides.

Getting there, and getting your people there

The transit strings tell this plainly. Midtown reaches nearly every line, with Grand Central and Penn within reach, while NoMad is served by the N/R/W, the 6 and the F/M at 23rd and 28th. After rent, that is the largest variable here.

The difference lands in hiring rather than on the rent roll. Staff arriving at Grand Central or Penn walk to a Midtown desk and transfer to reach a NoMad one, so a company whose senior people commute in from outside the city is buying back a change of train twice a day. A team that already lives downtown and rides one line is buying nothing.

Midtown sits beside Bryant Park, Grand Central and Penn Plaza, which are places people pass through; NoMad beside Flatiron, Murray Hill and Chelsea, which are places people live and eat. Map your roster's home neighborhoods against those two lists before you book anything.

Our recommendation, by tenant type

Under about 41 desks, take NoMad, and treat that as arithmetic rather than taste, because nothing we hold in Midtown is small enough for you. Over about 71 desks, take Midtown for the same reason in reverse.

Inside the overlapping band our default is NoMad. On a 10,000 square foot floor, $17 a foot is $170,000 a year, roughly $2,980 per person per year across the fifty-seven people that floor seats, and $850,000 over a five year term. That is hiring money, and NoMad's prewar full floors with their generous windows are a real product, not a consolation prize.

We argue the other side often enough to state it flatly. Pay for Midtown when clients come to you, when the senior half of the company arrives at Grand Central or Penn, or when the plan calls for a hundred desks on one level, which NoMad cannot deliver at any price. The strongest version of that case is the cheap end of Midtown, where the entire 26th at 1700 Broadway asks $79 for 13,266 square feet.

The tenant we steer away from Midtown is the growth-stage company signing for the address alone, paying up on a partial floor while its own staff transfer twice to reach it.

The practical next step

These submarkets sit minutes apart and we hold floors in both, so settle the question on foot in one afternoon rather than by email over three weeks. Standing in a $62 full floor on Broadway an hour after a $125 partial floor on Madison Avenue ends the argument fast.

Bring a two year headcount plan rather than today's number, because that figure decides whether NoMad belongs in the search at all. Ask for usable square footage alongside the rentable figure, since loss factor varies building to building and a lower rent on a worse loss factor is not lower. Settle how electricity and cleaning are charged and what the landlord will fund, then judge the two on taking rent rather than asking rent.