Office Space $50 to $75 per Sq Ft in Chelsea

What this band buys in Chelsea right now

Seven of Chelsea's nine available floors price inside this band, so this is very nearly the whole neighborhood.

• 275 Seventh Avenue, entire 24th floor: 18,668 square feet at $63, about $98,007 a month, roughly 107 desks. A larger prewar tower, bigger plates than the side street lofts.
• 151 West 26th Street, 12th floor penthouse: 17,610 square feet at $56, about $82,180 a month, roughly 101 desks, conference room and pantry in place.
• 127 West 26th Street, entire 7th floor: 9,500 square feet at $50, about $39,583 a month, roughly 54 desks. Lowest ask in the band.
• 151 West 26th Street, partial 10th floor: 9,000 square feet at $64, about $48,000 a month, roughly 51 desks. Hardwood, exposed brick and views, with a floor plan and Matterport walkthrough.
• 104 West 27th Street, entire 9th floor: 7,047 square feet at $59, about $34,648 a month, roughly 40 desks, hardwood floors and exposed ceilings.
• 115 West 30th Street, partial 4th floor: 3,500 square feet at $55, about $16,042 a month, roughly 20 desks. Furnished, with a conference room and phone rooms already in place.
• 153 West 27th Street, partial 11th floor: 2,937 square feet at $60, about $14,685 a month, roughly 17 desks. Furnished, wired and pantried, the shortest path to occupancy here.

Four are full floors; the three partials share a landing, so walk the demising line before ranking them on price.

The monthly math, worked plainly

New York quotes rent annually per rentable square foot, so the monthly number is one multiplication and one division. Take 104 West 27th Street: 7,047 square feet times $59 is $415,773 a year, divided by twelve is $34,648 a month. The same two steps on 275 Seventh Avenue give $1,176,084 and $98,007.

Carry one shortcut into tours: a dollar of asking rent costs the square footage divided by twelve each month. On a 9,000 foot floor a dollar is $750, so the fourteen dollar gap between 127 and 151 West 26th Street is $10,500 a month.

One caution. The footage quoted is rentable, not usable, so the space you can furnish sits below what you pay on, which is why we compare cost per seat off a measured plan.

What the asking rent does not include

Budgets in this band break on the second page of the lease. Five costs sit outside the listed number.

• Electric is almost never in base rent here, either submetered or billed as an inclusion of roughly $2 to $4 per square foot per year, which on 9,000 feet is $1,500 to $3,000 a month.
• Cleaning may or may not be included. Ask what nightly service covers, since pantries and trash removal are routinely carved out.
• Real estate tax escalations run from a base year fixed in your lease, after which you pay a share of every increase over it. A badly set base year costs dollars per foot by year three.
• Operating expense escalations come as a pass-through over a base year or a porter's wage formula, on top of the annual step in base rent, which runs around 2.5% to 3%.
• Buildout beyond the allowance is the largest number of all. Improvement money is paid against invoices, so anything above it is your cash or gets amortized back into rent.

What is actually negotiable at these numbers

Face rent moves last here, because ownership is protecting the number it will quote on the next floor in the stack.

• Free rent goes first, since it costs a period of income rather than a permanent markdown. Take it across construction and the opening months.
• The allowance beats a dollar off the rent on any floor needing work. Push for progress payments and the right to apply an unused balance against rent.
• Term length is the currency concessions are bought with, so trade the extra years for a renewal or expansion option rather than giving them away.
• Escalation caps decide what year five costs: a stated percentage rather than an index, a capped expense pass-through, and a base tax year set on a fully assessed building.
• The good guy guarantee is negotiable in every part, from who signs it to the notice you owe and when it ends after you surrender.

The ask and the taking rent are different numbers, which is why two tenants who signed at the same published $59 pay different money over five years.

Where this band sits, and who it suits

The median across our New York book is $75 per square foot per year, and every floor in this band asks under it. The partial 10th at 151 West 26th Street at $64 comes within eleven dollars; the 7th floor at 127 West 26th Street at $50 sits twenty-five dollars under, worth $237,500 a year on 9,500 feet.

Chelsea's own median across the nine floors we carry is $56, on a $44 to $64 range about 25% below the city, and the seven asks here read $50, $55, $56, $59, $60, $63 and $64, so the band's middle sits a shade above the neighborhood's, $59 against $56. Only two floors price below it, the partial 3rd at 153 West 27th Street and the entire 11th at 237 West 27th Street, both at $44, and nothing in Chelsea asks above $75.

This band suits a team of seventeen to a hundred that wants full-floor identity in a converted loft, on the A/C/E, 1, F/M at 14th and 23rd. Under fifteen people you pay for room you have not grown into. Above twenty thousand contiguous feet Chelsea has nothing today, which is where our six Flatiron floors, $43 to $115 with a median of $72, come in.