NoMad vs Hudson Yards: Office Space Compared

The $138 gap and what sits behind it

NoMad's median across four floors is $62 per square foot per year, in a range of $57 to $90. The Hudson Yards median is its single floor at $200. The gap is $138 a foot, NoMad about 69% below or Hudson Yards asking 223% more for the same square foot. Measured against the $75 median across the 46 priced floors on our New York book, NoMad sits 17% under and 66 Hudson Boulevard sits 167% over, the dearest floor we represent anywhere by a wide margin.

One floor is not a market, and we would rather flag that than let a tidy percentage do work it has not earned. The right-hand column is a single asking rent with no distribution behind it, so it cannot tell you what a second Hudson Yards landlord would take. Three or four West Side floors across more than one building would turn this into a comparison; one floor makes it a benchmark.

The part of the gap that is solid is product. NoMad's four floors are plates in existing NoMad buildings, three of the four described to us as already built. 66 Hudson Boulevard is The Spiral, a high floor in a recently built tower over the West Side rail yards, in a district served by the 7. We hold no description of that floor's condition or plan, so nothing here characterizes it.

Four floors against one, and who each can house

• 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, $57 to $90.
• Hudson Yards: 1 floor, 10,517 square feet, about 60 desks, $200.

This is the one Hudson Yards comparison where the sizes actually meet, and the result is blunt. 1239 Broadway's entire 12th floor is 12,500 square feet at $62, about $64,583 a month, described to us as built for a team of 75 to 80 with polished concrete, exposed ceilings, new linear lighting and updated restrooms. 66 Hudson Boulevard's partial 53rd is 10,517 square feet at $200, about $175,283 a month. The NoMad floor is 1,983 square feet larger and costs $1,328,400 less a year.

The rest of the NoMad book fills in around it. 1235 Broadway's entire 4th, 9,500 square feet at $62, about $49,083 a month, furnished and wired, with hardwood, an exposed ceiling, a wraparound window line and a large wet pantry. 22 West 27th Street's entire 7th, 6,000 at $57, about $28,500 a month, on which we hold no description. The Empire State Building's partial 43rd, 5,621 at $90, about $42,158 a month, a new prebuilt with six windowed offices, two conference rooms and open workspace for 18.

Getting there and getting people there

NoMad is served by the N/R/W, 6 and F/M at 23rd and 28th. Hudson Yards has the 7 at 34th Street Hudson Yards, with the A/C/E and LIRR at Penn.

No line appears on both lists, which makes this a genuine relocation rather than a shift of a few blocks. NoMad sits on east side and crosstown service, so a team riding the 6 or the N/R/W keeps a one-seat commute where the same team going west picks up a transfer and a walk. It runs the other way for anyone arriving on the LIRR, which lands at Penn.

Poll home zip codes before the tour. Minutes added to a daily commute are a real cost that never appears in the rent.

Our recommendation by tenant type

For a team of 32 to 71 people, take NoMad, and the arithmetic is not subtle. Sixty people on the Hudson Yards floor sit at 175 square feet each and cost about $35,057 per person per year in rent. The same sixty at 1239 Broadway sit at 208 square feet each, more room per head, for about $12,917 per person. That difference is $1,328,400 across the group, enough for a buildout, furniture and several hires.

Hudson Yards earns the premium for a narrow profile: a company of roughly sixty that wants one floor in new construction, whose clients or recruits come to the building, and which can fill 10,517 square feet from the first month without a sublet plan beside the lease. For that tenant the Spiral floor does something no NoMad floor does.

It suits nobody whose headcount will look different in eighteen months, and nobody who will reopen $175,283 a month every quarter. On this pairing we recommend NoMad to most of the companies who ask, and we say so with the Hudson Yards floor sitting on our own book.

The practical next step

Tour both. 1235 and 1239 Broadway sit on the same block of Broadway, so three of the four NoMad floors and the Hudson Yards floor fit into one afternoon, and walking a 12,500 square foot loft plate then a high floor on the far West Side settles this faster than any spreadsheet.

Since we hold no description for the Hudson Yards floor, put the delivery questions first: built or raw, what the landlord will fund, what conveys. At $200 those answers move the real number more than the rent does. Ask for usable square footage next to the rentable figure everywhere, because a 20% loss factor turns $200 rentable into $250 per usable foot and $62 into $77.50.

Then compare taking rents rather than asking rents, since free months, improvement allowance and the escalation base year decide what a lease costs. Bring a two-year headcount plan, because that is what determines whether Hudson Yards belongs in the search at all.