NoMad vs FiDi: Office Space Compared

The $10 gap, and why it decides very little

NoMad's median asking rent is $62 per square foot per year and FiDi's is $72, ten dollars a foot apart, NoMad about 13% cheaper or FiDi about 15% dearer for the same square foot. Against the $75 median across the 49 floors on our book, NoMad sits roughly 17% below while FiDi comes within four percent of it, which makes downtown the closest thing we have to a benchmark submarket.

Ten dollars stops sounding like much once it is priced per head. On a 6,000 square foot floor the gap is $60,000 a year, $5,000 a month, about $147 per desk per month across 34 people. Against a commute that costs you a hire, or a plate that fights your layout for five years, that is close to noise.

Both medians rest on thin samples. NoMad's midpoint is set by two adjacent Broadway addresses that both ask exactly $62, while FiDi's comes from a middle pair of $64 and $79, with a $115 tower floor at 4 World Trade Center above and a $60 prebuilt at 45 Broadway below. Neither number describes a market so much as four floors.

What we hold in each, and who fits

The two books hardly meet.

• NoMad: 4 floors, 5,621 to 12,500 square feet, roughly 32 to 71 desks at the 175 square feet per person we plan around, asking $57 to $90.
• FiDi: 4 floors, 2,624 to 6,997 square feet, roughly 15 to 40 desks, asking $60 to $115.

NoMad's smallest floor is 5,621 square feet and FiDi's largest is 6,997, so the overlap is one narrow band of roughly 32 to 40 desks and nothing on either side of it. Above 40 desks the search is NoMad: 1235 Broadway at 9,500 square feet and $62 runs about $49,083 a month, furnished and wired, while 1239 Broadway at 12,500 and $62 runs about $64,583 and is described to us as built for a team of 75 to 80. Both carry a walkthrough.

Below 30 desks the search is downtown. 45 Broadway's partial 12th is 2,624 square feet at $60, about $13,120 a month, a prebuilt with three private offices, a conference room, a pantry and an open work area, and it is the smallest floor either submarket offers by nearly 2,400 square feet.

Inside the overlap the choice is genuinely close: 22 West 27th Street at 6,000 square feet and $57, about $28,500 a month, against 32 Old Slip's partial 32nd at 6,997 and $64, about $37,317, furnished and wired for immediate move-in with waterfront views.

Getting there, and getting people there

NoMad is served by the N/R/W, the 6 and the F/M at 23rd and 28th. FiDi has the 4/5, 2/3, R/W, 1 and J/Z at Fulton and Wall, plus PATH at the WTC Oculus. The R and W run through both, which is the quiet reason these two can sit inside one search at all.

FiDi's list is longer and converges from more directions, and the PATH connection is the argument you make to a candidate living in New Jersey. That access carries into the buildings on our record: 4 World Trade Center's partial 44th is described as having direct access to the Oculus, and 17 State Street's partial 26th as sitting on extensive transit alongside a new tenant amenity center and a 25,000 square foot renovated plaza.

NoMad answers a different map. It is the middle of Manhattan, roughly even-handed for staff coming from Brooklyn, Queens and uptown, and walkable to the Flatiron, Murray Hill and Chelsea catchments. Neither is better in the abstract. Collect home zip codes and the answer tends to write itself.

Our recommendation by tenant type

Above 40 desks, take NoMad. Our FiDi book stops at 6,997 square feet and NoMad reaches 12,500, so the 13% saving is a bonus on a decision that size has already made.

Under 30 desks, take FiDi, for the same reason in reverse. Nothing in NoMad goes below 5,621 square feet, and a 20-person company signing that floor pays for roughly a dozen seats it does not have. At $13,120 a month, 45 Broadway costs less than half what NoMad's cheapest floor does.

In the 32 to 40 desk band we take FiDi more often than the rent gap suggests, and the reason is product rather than price. NoMad's two floors in that band are the Empire State Building's partial 43rd at $90, a new prebuilt with six windowed offices, two conference rooms, open work for 18 and eligibility for the landlord's turnkey services, and 22 West 27th Street at $57, on which our record carries no amenity list at all. FiDi answers with two finished tower floors at $64 and $79, one furnished and wired for immediate move-in. Paying $7 a foot more for a floor you can occupy in weeks rather than months is usually the cheaper decision once a fit-out is priced honestly.

The tenant who should stay uptown regardless is the one planning to double. Downtown gives that company nowhere to go inside our current book, and negotiating an exit before the term matures costs more than the ten dollars ever saved.

The practical next step

These two sit a subway ride apart and both fit into one day, so this can be settled by walking rather than by spreadsheet. A 12,500 square foot loft floor followed by a tower floor thirty-two stories up ends most debates about what the ten dollars buys.

Bring a two-year headcount rather than today's, because at these sizes it decides which submarket is even eligible. Ask every landlord for usable square footage alongside the rentable figure, since loss factor varies building to building and moves real cost per seat further than the medians on this page do. Establish whether each floor is direct or sublease, settle how electric and cleaning are handled, then compare free rent, the allowance and the escalation cap side by side in the same week. Taking rent decides this. Asking rent only starts it.