Office Space $50 to $75 per Sq Ft in Penn Plaza

What this band buys in Penn Plaza right now

Both of Penn Plaza's available floors price inside this band, and both sit in the same loft building one above the other.

• 213 West 35th Street, 11th floor: 6,100 square feet at $52, about $26,433 a month, roughly 35 desks. Furnished, with a conference room and a terrace, and a Matterport walkthrough to take first.
• 213 West 35th Street, 10th floor: 5,250 square feet at $50, about $21,875 a month, roughly 30 desks. No furniture on our record, so carry a fit-out number the floor above does not need.

Together they are 11,350 contiguous square feet at a blended $51, about $48,308 a month and roughly 65 desks, worth raising if you expect to grow.

The monthly math, worked plainly

New York quotes rent annually per rentable square foot, so the monthly figure is one multiplication and one division. The 11th floor: 6,100 times $52 is $317,200 a year, divided by twelve is $26,433. The 10th: 5,250 times $50 is $262,500, divided by twelve is $21,875. Those two steps work on any floor you see.

The $4,558 a month between them is worth pulling apart, because the two dollar gap in rent is barely half of it: the extra 850 square feet at $52 accounts for $3,683 a month, the extra two dollars across 5,250 feet for $875.

Then divide by heads: about $755 per desk per month upstairs and $729 downstairs, the comparison that survives when two floors differ in size. One caution on the denominator. You pay on rentable square feet, and the loss factor means the area you can furnish is smaller than the listing.

What the asking rent does not include

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

• Electric is rarely inside base rent, either submetered or billed as an inclusion of roughly $2 to $4 per square foot per year, another $1,000 to $2,000 a month on 6,100 feet.
• Cleaning deserves a direct question, because nightly service is often included while pantries, trash removal and anything above standard scope get billed separately.
• Real estate tax escalations run from a base year written into the lease, after which you pay your share of every dollar the taxes rise above it. That year is negotiated, not handed to you.
• Operating expense escalations arrive as a pass-through over a base year or a porter's wage formula, on top of the annual step in base rent of about 2.5% to 3%. Compounded, a 3% step turns $317,200 into roughly $357,000 by year five.
• Buildout above the allowance is the biggest of the five, since improvement money is paid against invoices after inspection, and anything beyond it is your cash or gets amortized back into rent.

What is actually negotiable at these numbers

Face rent moves last on floors already asking $50 and $52, because ownership is protecting what it will quote on the next floor in the stack.

• Free rent goes first, since abated months cost a landlord a period of income rather than a permanent markdown on the rent roll. Take it across construction and the opening months.
• The allowance beats a dollar off the rent on the unfurnished floor. Ask for progress payments rather than one reimbursement at the end, and for any unused balance to apply against rent.
• Term length is the currency the rest is bought with, so trade the fifth and sixth years for a renewal option and a right of first offer on the floor above.
• Escalation caps decide what year five costs: a stated percentage instead of an index, a ceiling on the expense pass-through, and a tax base year you have actually looked at.
• The good guy guarantee is negotiable in all its parts, from who signs it to the notice you owe and how long your exposure runs after you surrender the space.

The ask and the taking rent are different numbers, which is why two tenants signing at the same published $52 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 both floors here ask well under it. The 11th at $52 is twenty-three dollars below, worth $140,300 a year on 6,100 feet; the 10th at $50 is twenty-five dollars below, worth $131,250 on 5,250.

Penn Plaza's own median is $52, on a range that runs from $50 to $135 once 2 Penn Plaza's partial 17th is counted. This page's band reaches to $75 while nothing here asks between $52 and the $135 at 2 Penn Plaza, so a tenant budgeting $70 a foot is not shopping a better floor here, they are shopping a different neighborhood.

What the discount buys is the commute. LIRR and NJ Transit run out of Penn Station and Moynihan two blocks away with the 1/2/3 and A/C/E underneath, and the loft stock on the side streets leases below what the same space costs ten blocks in any direction. The band suits a team of thirty to thirty-five drawing its people from Long Island, New Jersey or the northern suburbs, where door-to-desk time is a hiring argument. Above sixty-five heads Penn Plaza has nothing today.