SoHo vs Hudson Yards: Office Space Compared

The $102 gap, between two expensive neighborhoods

The medians sit $102 apart, $98 per square foot per year in SoHo against $200 in Hudson Yards. Hudson Yards is about 104% higher; SoHo about 51% lower. On the Hudson Yards floor's own footprint of 10,517 square feet, $200 is $2,103,400 a year and about $175,283 a month, while SoHo's median across the same footage runs $1,030,666 and about $85,889. That is $1,072,734 a year, roughly $5.4 million over five years before escalations.

Neither of these is a cheap neighborhood, which is what makes the argument interesting. SoHo sits about 31% above the median across our whole New York book, so a SoHo tenant has already decided the building is part of what they are buying. This is not thrift against indulgence. It is cast-iron loft stock against the newest construction in Manhattan.

The spread is where they stop resembling each other. SoHo's nine floors run $68 to $125, so even its dearest listings, 520 Broadway and 503-511 Broadway at $125, ask $75 a foot less than the Hudson Yards floor. Hudson Yards has no spread. One floor, one number.

What the inventory in each actually looks like

Nine floors in SoHo, one in Hudson Yards. SoHo runs 3,750 to 27,344 square feet, roughly 21 to 156 desks; Hudson Yards is 10,517 square feet and about 60 desks.

• Below 7,000 square feet, seven SoHo floors, from the partial 5th at 110 Greene Street, 3,750 feet at $95, to the entire 10th at 520 Broadway, 5,539 at $125. That boutique end is where SoHo's median comes from.
• At the Hudson Yards floor's size, nothing. SoHo jumps from 7,300 square feet at 50 Greene Street to 27,344 at One Soho Square, so there is no size-for-size answer, only a smaller floor and a much larger one.
• Above it, only the partial 2nd at One Soho Square, 27,344 feet at $68. SoHo's largest floor is also its cheapest: at scale, SoHo prices below the citywide median.

So SoHo is the expensive neighborhood at boutique size and the sensible one at scale, while Hudson Yards is expensive at the single size it offers.

Getting there, and getting your next twenty hires there

SoHo's transit is N/Q/R/W, 6, A/C/E, B/D/F/M. Hudson Yards is the 7 at 34th Street Hudson Yards, with A/C/E and LIRR at Penn. They share the A/C/E, the one commute that looks much the same whichever you pick.

Past that they are opposites. SoHo is a dense downtown web, four groups of lines inside a short walk, serving a team already weighted toward Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. Hudson Yards is one subway terminal plus regional rail a few blocks east at Penn, and the rail is the real argument: a workforce arriving from Long Island stops changing trains. If none of your people commute that way, it counts for nothing.

Our recommendation, by type of tenant

For a design-led or consumer brand whose office doubles as a showroom, SoHo is the answer and it is not close. Cast-iron loft stock with high ceilings does work that would otherwise sit in a marketing budget, and at $98 you pay about 31% over the citywide median for something genuinely finite. Take the one large floor and you pay $68, under that median.

The tenant we would send to Hudson Yards is narrower. The address is part of the pitch, new construction is a requirement rather than a preference, and $2.1 million a year is a number the business carries without argument. If that does not describe your company, $1,072,734 a year saved on the same footprint in SoHo is the obvious call.

Each side costs something. SoHo plates run long and narrow, landmark rules limit what a buildout may move in some of these buildings, and freight, loading and after-hours access are the questions to ask in older loft stock. Hudson Yards offers one floor, so if it does not fit, there is no second option here.

What would make this comparison better, and how to settle it

We will not dress this up. Nine floors against one is not a comparison of two submarkets, and the Hudson Yards median is a single landlord's ask that moves the day we take on a second floor there.

Until then, settle it in an afternoon. Four to six floors in one run, sequenced so the cheapest SoHo floor and the Hudson Yards floor land on the same day, does more than any spreadsheet.

• Ask for the loss factor on every floor. Rentable and usable square feet carry the same rent and are not the same product, and at $200 a foot that difference is worth hundreds of thousands a year.
• Ask what is actually on offer at 66 Hudson Boulevard. We have no description, photography or floor plan on file for that floor, so its condition and delivery terms come from ownership on the tour.

Send us the headcount you are hiring toward, the month you need people sitting down and the number you cannot pass, and we will route both neighborhoods into one afternoon. We represent tenants only, and we publish what every floor asks, including the one most tenants should not take.