SoHo vs FiDi: Office Space Compared

The $26 gap, and where it actually lives

SoHo's median asking rent is $98 per square foot per year against FiDi's $72, a difference of $26 a foot, or about 36%. Against the $75 citywide median across our book, SoHo sits roughly 31% above and FiDi sits a shade below it, so neither is the cheap option in New York.

The gap is not one showy tower floor. Our nine SoHo floors ask $68 to $125 and our four FiDi floors ask $60 to $115, so the ranges nearly cover one another, though SoHo's cheapest floor now sits $8 above FiDi's cheapest. What separates the medians is the small end: seven of the nine SoHo floors measure under 6,400 square feet and ask $78 to $125, while the only SoHo floor priced below $70 is much the largest we hold.

Put comparable floors side by side and most of the 36% evaporates. 540 Broadway at 6,350 square feet and $85 runs $44,979 a month against $43,490 for 17 State Street at 6,606 square feet and $79, under $1,500 apart on floors seating the same team. A median describes a book, not the two floors in front of you.

What we hold in each, and who fits

The two books are nothing like the same shape, which settles more searches than price does.

• SoHo: 9 floors, 3,750 to 27,344 square feet, roughly 21 to 156 desks at the 175 square feet per person we plan around, asking $68 to $125.
• FiDi: 4 floors, 2,624 to 6,997 square feet, roughly 15 to 40 desks, asking $60 to $115.

Above forty desks there is no comparison to run: our FiDi ceiling is 6,997 square feet and a team of sixty cannot sit on it. SoHo takes that team, though no longer cheaply: 50 Greene Street at 7,300 square feet asks $98, some 36% over FiDi's median, and only One Soho Square at 27,344 square feet and $68 seats sixty. Large loft blocks price down per foot, the reversal most tenants do not expect here.

Under forty desks the arithmetic turns the other way, hard. The cheapest route onto a SoHo floor we hold is 110 Greene Street, 3,750 square feet at $95, about $29,688 a month; in FiDi it is 45 Broadway, 2,624 square feet at $60, about $13,120. A fifteen-person team pays more than twice as much for SoHo, on 1,126 square feet it never asked for.

Getting there, and getting people there

SoHo is served by the N/Q/R/W, 6, A/C/E and B/D/F/M. FiDi has the 4/5, 2/3, R/W, 1 and J/Z at Fulton and Wall, plus PATH at the WTC Oculus. The R/W threads both, the reason these two sit inside one search.

Commute geography is a hiring cost that never appears on the rent roll. SoHo catches the lettered lines out of Brooklyn and Queens along with the 6, so it suits a team already scattered across the boroughs. FiDi converges from the south and adds the one connection SoHo cannot match, PATH at the Oculus, the sentence that lands with a candidate in New Jersey. Poll home zip codes before you tour.

Our recommendation, by tenant type

Our position is not balanced, because the book is not balanced. A company needing more than forty desks takes SoHo because FiDi holds nothing that size, though only One Soho Square at $68 still beats FiDi's middle on price. Rent-constrained teams of fifteen to forty go downtown and should not apologize for it: $13,120 a month against $29,688 is a hire or two every year.

The tenant who should pay the SoHo premium is the one whose office does recruiting and selling work, which is why design-led and consumer brands keep taking cast-iron loft floors up there. Price it per head first. On the 5,003 square feet at 60 Charlton Street, $26 a foot is about $130,000 a year, roughly $4,485 across the twenty-nine people it seats, and one senior hire who says yes because of the address covers that.

Not everyone should. A twenty-person company that wants SoHo on the letterhead and will be forty by the end of the term is buying the premium exactly where it lives, since our small SoHo floors are the expensive ones and the one cheap floor we hold there is nearly eight times the space it needs. Sign downtown on a shorter term instead.

The practical next step

Both can be toured in one day and we hold floors in each, so this need not be settled on a spreadsheet. Tribeca sits between them and an afternoon covers four to six floors across the pair. A cast-iron loft followed by a floor thirty-two stories above Old Slip usually ends the argument in the elevator.

Bring a two-year headcount plan rather than today's number, since that alone decides whether FiDi is in play. Ask for usable square footage beside the rentable figure, because loss factor varies building to building and $85 on a generous measurement can beat $79 on a tight one. In SoHo, ask early what a landmarked loft will and will not let you change, because that shapes the test fit and the DOB filing more than rent does. Then judge both on taking rent: free rent and a buildout allowance swing these deals further than $26 a foot.