Office Space for 20 People in NoMad

Where the 175 square feet per person goes

A workstation, a chair and the aisle behind it come to roughly fifty square feet, so a 20-person team's desks fit inside a thousand. The other 125 feet a head buys what a desk cannot do: two or three enclosed meeting rooms, a pair of phone rooms, a pantry with enough seating to double as the all-hands space, storage, an IT closet, and the circulation tying it together. Drawn to code, aisles and egress paths alone take a quarter to a third of the floor.

• Budget 200 to 225 feet a head when founders sit in private offices, when clients and candidates come to you most days, or when confidential calls run all afternoon.
• Budget 140 to 160 when the team is open-plan, attendance is genuinely hybrid, and almost nobody visits.

Companies that sign at the bottom of that range for a full-time team spend the second year interviewing in the pantry.

What 3,500 feet costs here, and against the city

The median of what we hold in NoMad in this size band is $74 per square foot per year, so 3,500 square feet is $257,250 a year, about $21,438 a month, before electricity (usually $2-4 per square foot) and before a dollar of buildout. The same footprint at the $72 citywide median across our book runs $252,000 a year, about $21,000 a month, roughly $5,250 less annually, so a floor that fits twenty in NoMad prices a hair above the city.

One caveat: $57 is the least expensive of the three NoMad floors we have open, and the median across all three is $62, which prices 3,500 feet at $217,000 a year, about $18,083 a month. Asking rent is not taking rent either: landlords defend the face number because it prices the building for every other tenant, then pay the difference in free months and allowance. What matters at signing is how much of the first year and the buildout somebody else funded.

What a floor at this headcount has to hold

Twenty people belong on one floor, and NoMad makes that easy, since the prewar stock here runs to boutique full floors with side cores rather than tower plates carved into suites. Splitting a team this size across two part-floors duplicates the pantry and the conference room and saves nothing.

Program the floor before you sign it. We plan two enclosed rooms seating six to eight, one of which has to carry a board meeting, plus two or three phone rooms, the most requested and least provided element in every office we build. If those rooms cannot land against the core without turning the open area into a corridor, the floor is wrong, and a test fit settles that in a week rather than in month three.

Leases are written on rentable feet, which carry a share of lobbies, corridors and mechanical space, and usable area typically sits 15-25% lower. That makes 3,500 rentable feet 2,625 to 2,975 of floor you can furnish, and the real allowance 130 to 150 feet a head.

Growing into it, and out of it

Thirty people is the test this lease has to survive. At the same allowance that team needs about 5,250 rentable square feet, and at $74 the rent moves from $21,438 to roughly $32,156 a month. Most hiring companies reach that inside two years, so the lease should answer the question rather than leave it to whatever is vacant then.

• Ask for a right of first offer on contiguous space at the letter of intent, while it costs nothing. Where the full floor is the unit, one neighbor leaving is the whole expansion plan.
• Three years protects the option and costs concessions, since free rent and allowance are funded out of term length. Five buys the better package and the worse flexibility, and that trade matters more here than the rent per foot.
• Negotiate assignment and sublease as though you will use them: consent not unreasonably withheld, affiliate assignment without consent, no profit split or a modest one.

Expect six to twelve months of security, usually a letter of credit, and a good guy guarantee capping exposure at rent owed through an orderly surrender.

What is on our book right now in NoMad

• 22 West 27th Street [Entire 7th Floor], 6,000 sq ft at $57, about $28,500 a month, sized for roughly 34 people. It is the cheaper of the two NoMad floors we hold near this requirement, 71% larger than a 20-person footprint and about $7,062 a month above the 3,500 foot budget, which buys room to reach thirty-four without moving again. A floor plan and a full photo set are published, so the layout can be judged before touring.
• 1235 Broadway [Entire 4th Floor] at 9,500 sq ft and 1239 Broadway [Entire 12th Floor] at 12,500 sq ft, both $62, are sized for about 54 and 71 people and do not belong in this search.

The smallest NoMad floor we have open is the Empire State Building's prebuilt partial 43rd at 5,621 feet and $90, about $42,158 a month, so a 20-person team either buys growth room now or widens the search into Flatiron, Murray Hill and Chelsea, each a few blocks away. We represent tenants only, so the question worth putting to us is which landlord will move and how far.