New shared professional office listings

We are close to launching our revised website for LookingForSpace.com. This new version will incorporate location searching that coincides with google autocomplete, and a new way to search within professional designations and specialties. Finally, rather than presenting listings in random order - they will now appear in chronological order. If your listing slips "below the fold" and you'd like to see it at the top again, you can "boost" your listing for a small fee - and refresh the date to the current day. This will push your listing back to the top of the list.

Here's what our new search bar will look like:

As you can see, the "location" bar is a fill in field that will use Google Autocomplete - and will coincide with the exact way that Google recognizes addresses and neighborhoods. You'll be able to choose the search radius as well.

As mentioned, each listing is going to be tagged with a profession. We are starting with 5 basic groups we feel will encompass the majority of office users in major cities. Each group will incorporate specialties within that category. They are LEGAL (all specialties), TECH/MEDIA (technology, advertising, media and information), FINANCE (finance, insurance, real estate), HEALTH (medical, dental, psychology, physical therapy, alternative medicine).

We are also including a SUITE category because a certain number of our site visitors are interested in more "managed offices" within a legal suite or executive suite.

The last sub-category under SUITES for the small office user will be small "PRIVATE SPACES" - commercial office space available for sublease that can also be categorized as "purpose built" with a specific profession in mind. Example - a law firm subleasing office space will easily find a willing subtenant that is another law firm. But actually there are several other possible layouts in other industries that would make the space fungible.

As an example profession fungible spaces, we recently subleased a 6500 sq. ft. floor on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to a Philadelphia based law firm, Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel LLP. The sublessor was a venture capital fund that had moved to expand. The layout they left behind was very office intensive in a building with windows on 3 sides. They had a large windowed conference room and pantry with lunch room space - and a very nice reception and waiting area immediately off the elevators. This financial firm's layout exactly fit the law firm's office space requirement and we made a quick and happy union when our out of town law firm subleased the office space.

The only hiccup in the deal was that possession occurred with a few more cosmetic blemishes than anticipated from an earlier inspection. (There was a disconnect between what their broker promised us and what we ultimately received.) But all is well and after a little touching up, Obermayer is happily ensconced in its new full floor digs at 521 Fifth Avenue.

So usually a specialty practice with extra offices will rent unoccupied space to someone with a similar practice type - but very often, if the primary distinction is heavy concentration of perimeter windowed offices - the spaces aren't necessarily so different from each other. The largest differences occur between windowed offices and open space, and with health care practices, plumbing to the offices usually comes with specific requirements to that profession.

We segment the spaces into filterable professions because more often than not, people prefer tenants that adhere to the same rules, regulations and standards that they do. This is why, for example, we don't often see Law 250 firms renting offices within their practice space to outside attorneys. The client security standards are just too strict to allow non-employees to occupy space side by side with their attorneys and paralegals. A mid to small size law firm might request "attorneys only" respond to their ad while on the other hand a similar firm could welcome "attorneys & CPA's only" - and some others might designate their listings for "all professionals". Another example would be a financial firm accepting a lawyer as a subtenant. The purpose of the designations are to advise the reader of the "flavor" of the space. The subtenant then uses the information as they wish.

So LookingForSpace.com is about to enter a new phase of operations with the primary changes being the search types that are available as well as the organization of listings in chronological order - with the ability to refresh the listing date on demand. We hope that when these changes are released before July 1, that our members and readers will be as excited about them as we are.

We value your thoughts on our service and business model and would appreciate hearing from you on any matter, favorable or not. Call our principal, Neal Lerner, (212) 986-9100 or Contact Us by email with your thoughts and suggestions.