SoHo vs Grand Central: Office Space Compared

The seventeen dollar gap, and what it actually measures

SoHo's median asking rent across the floors we hold is $98 per square foot per year against $81 in Grand Central, about 21% on the rounded numbers and nearer 22% against the unrounded $80.50 our two east side floors median to. On a 30 desk requirement, roughly 5,250 square feet at 175 square feet per person, that is $514,500 a year downtown against $425,250, some $7,440 a month. One month of free rent does not close that.

The medians sit seventeen dollars apart, and the number matters far less than the shape of each book. Our nine SoHo floors run $68 to $125, fifty seven dollars end to end inside one neighborhood, while the two Grand Central floors sit seventeen dollars apart, and downtown the one cheap rent comes attached to the biggest plate, $68 on 27,344 square feet. That median is the midpoint of a split book.

The premium buys different things at each end: landmarked nineteenth century loft in the cast-iron district around Greene, Mercer and Broadway, or the formal terminal district of law, finance and consulting firms.

What we hold in each, and who can actually fit

SoHo gives you seven floors between 3,750 and 27,344 square feet, roughly 21 to 156 desks, four full floors and three partials. Grand Central gives you two, 5,230 and 5,772 square feet, about 30 to 33 desks, both partial.

• 21 to 29 desks: SoHo only, since our smallest Grand Central floor starts at 30.
• 30 to 33 desks: both submarkets, the one band where this is a real question.
• 34 desks and up: SoHo only, out to about 156 on the largest floor.

Inside that overlap the arithmetic flips. The one SoHo floor sized for 30 to 33 desks is the entire 10th floor at 520 Broadway, 5,539 square feet at $125, about $57,698 a month, against 60 East 42nd Street's partial 13th, 5,772 square feet at $72, about $34,632 for 233 more feet. Close to $277,000 a year, running the opposite way from the fact box.

Getting there, and getting your next twenty hires there

SoHo is served by the N/Q/R/W, the 6, the A/C/E and the B/D/F/M; Grand Central by the 4/5/6, the 7, the S and Metro-North. The 6 is the line they share, useful for a tour and beside the point for a hire, since those groups are close to interchangeable.

Metro-North is the asymmetry: the terminal puts Westchester and Connecticut inside forty minutes of a desk, while a commuter bound for Greene Street pays for the train and again for the leg south. Where an office sits decides who applies and who quietly stops, which surfaces in year two as attrition, so we map where the next twenty hires will come from before booking a tour.

Our recommendation, taken by tenant type

Most of our clients belong in SoHo, and inventory settles it before taste does. Any team under 30 desks or over 33 has no Grand Central option at any price, and a design-led or consumer company gets seven floors to choose from rather than two.

Grand Central earns the money in one case, and not the one the medians suggest. A professional services firm of 30 to 33 people whose partners and clients ride Metro-North should sit by the terminal, where at that size it is also the cheaper decision by close to $277,000 a year.

The tenant who should pay SoHo's premium anyway is the consumer or design brand that runs its office as a room clients, press and candidates walk into, where the loft is a working asset rather than an indulgence. We will sign that off after saying the number out loud, because $23,000 a month is a hire and a half. Two tenants we send the other way: the firm whose institutional clients expect a conservative front door, and the team whose senior people commute by train.

Settle it in one afternoon

The 6 runs between them, we hold all nine floors in this comparison, and four to six fit into a single afternoon. See the terminal first, then come downtown and find out what the same check buys in a loft.

Take the same questions into every floor: how it was measured, the usable number behind the rentable one, how electric and cleaning are handled, what condition it delivers in, and which base years the escalations run against. Asking rent is not taking rent, and free rent and the improvement allowance move net effective cost further than a dollar off the face. On the SoHo half, ask what the landmarked stock will not let a buildout touch. Send us the head count and the term and we will build the day around floors that fit.