Office Space over $100 per Sq Ft in Bryant Park

What the band buys in Bryant Park right now

Four floors sit on our Bryant Park book and exactly one prices above $100 per square foot per year.

• 500 Fifth Avenue, Entire 55th Floor: 6,928 rentable square feet at $125 per square foot per year, $866,000 a year, about $72,167 a month, roughly 40 desks.

Seat count moves with the plan rather than the lease: about 49 on a tight open layout, closer to 31 once a perimeter of private offices goes in. It is a full plate: one front door, one reception point, no landing shared with a neighbor. Our record describes outstanding natural light and panoramic views with immediate occupancy, and flags views as the only amenity, so condition is a tour question.

The other three Bryant Park floors sit below the band, and the ranking by foot is not the ranking by month. The entire 33rd at 5 Bryant Park is 7,500 feet at $96, about $60,000 a month and furnished, 572 square feet more area for $12,167 a month less. 1450 Broadway carries the other two, at $95 on 4,109 feet and $65 on 17,296.

The monthly math, worked plainly

New York quotes rent annually per rentable square foot, so the monthly figure is one multiplication and one division. 6,928 times $125 is $866,000 a year, and over twelve months, $72,167.

On this footprint each dollar of annual asking rent costs about $577 a month. The $25 between $125 and the floor of this band is $14,433 a month; the $53 up to the $72 citywide median is $30,599.

Per seat it lands harder. $72,167 across 40 desks is roughly $1,804 a month, about $1,473 at 49 on a dense plan, closer to $2,328 at 31 once the offices go in.

One caution runs under all of it: 6,928 is rentable, and the usable area your desks stand on is smaller by the building's loss factor. At the 15-25% full floors commonly carry, usable lands near 5,889 or 5,196, a swing of 693 square feet worth $86,625 a year at $125 a foot. Measure it in a test fit before the letter of intent.

What the asking rent does not include

Budgets above $100 rarely break on the rent. They break on the items just outside it, each one large at this level.

• Electric is rarely inside base rent: submetered or charged as an inclusion at $2 to $4 per square foot a year, $1,155 to $2,309 a month here on top of the $72,167.
• Cleaning rewards reading, since nightly service commonly stops short of pantries, interior glass and construction debris.
• Real estate tax escalations run off a base year in the lease, after which you pay a share of every increase above it, and a base year agreed before a reassessment costs dollars a foot by year three.
• Operating escalations arrive as a pass-through over that base year or as a porter's wage formula, on top of a 2.5% to 3% annual step in base rent. Three percent on $866,000 adds $25,980 in year two.
• Buildout past the allowance is the largest of the five. Improvement money is paid against approved work, so anything beyond it is your cash or gets amortized back into rent at interest, and furniture, cabling and the architect's fee sit outside it. Our record flags no installation here, so assume a construction calendar and a DOB filing until the tour proves otherwise.

What moves in a negotiation above $100

Face rent moves least at the top of a building's range, because ownership protects the number that prices the next floor in the stack, and a landlord defending a high rent will spend to defend it. Concessions here run richer than at $65.

Free rent goes first, since it costs an owner a period of income rather than a permanent markdown. One free month is worth $72,167, and four months across a five year term is $288,668, about $8.33 a foot a year off the effective rent while the headline holds at $125.

The improvement allowance is quoted per rentable foot, so every $10 funds $69,280 of work here. Ask for a work letter with progress payments rather than a lump sum on substantial completion.

Term is the currency concessions get bought with, so trade the years deliberately and take a renewal option in exchange. Escalation caps decide what year seven costs: a stated percentage rather than an index, a ceiling on controllable operating expenses, a late tax base year. Each month of security is $72,167 committed, so a letter of credit cut from six to three months frees $216,501, and a good guy guarantee is negotiable, from who signs it to the notice you owe before vacating.

Where this band sits, and who it suits

Bryant Park's median is $96 across four floors asking $65 to $125, so this one asks about 30 percent above the middle and defines the ceiling. Across the 49 floors we represent in ten New York submarkets the median is $72 in a book running $43 to $200, which puts $125 some 74 percent above the middle, near but not at the top.

Hold the monthly number still and the premium becomes obvious. $72,167 a month buys about 12,028 square feet at the citywide median, or about 9,021 at Bryant Park's own $96. The $1,804 a desk here compares with about $1,395 on the 33rd at 5 Bryant Park and about $946 on the 4th at 1450 Broadway.

Elsewhere at the same footprint the money goes two ways. A 7,092 foot partial 21st at 520 Madison Avenue asks the identical $125 in Midtown, about $73,875 a month, for a partial floor rather than a whole one. A 6,997 foot partial 32nd at 32 Old Slip asks $64, about $37,317, close to half.

This band suits a team of about forty that needs the address and the light working in front of clients and senior candidates, and can use every foot of a full floor. Companies buying area do better at $95 or $96 in the same few blocks, where two furnished floors sit, or downtown for half the cost. We would rather make that case before the tour than after.