Commercial Real Estate Brokerage Services: What a Broker on Your Side Negotiates

Tenant-first, made checkable

Any firm can call itself tenant-first. Here is what it means when Nomad runs your search, in things you can verify. Every landlord offer is converted to its cost over the whole term before you weigh it, so two offers can be read against each other. And you are told which buildings on your list, if any, Nomad leases for their owners, because the firm does that work too.

Why the face rent moves least

A building's value, and often its loan, is calculated from the rents printed in its leases. The rent in your lease also becomes the comparable for the next tenant in the building. So a landlord would sooner give away months than lower the printed number. A well-negotiated deal often leaves the asking rent where it was and moves the terms around it.

Where the flexibility lives: three terms a 65-person tenant should price

• Free rent. About one month for each year of term is a common shape, and more when the space needs work or has been sitting. We check whether those months run during the buildout or after it, and whether electricity is still billed. Free rent, explained.
• The improvement allowance. Usually the largest number that can be moved. We argue it from a contractor's estimate of your buildout, not from a round figure, and settle what happens to any unused balance. The allowance entry has the detail.
• Escalation caps. The difference between 2.5 and 3 percent a year looks like rounding and is not, on a large floor over a long term. We ask for a fixed or capped increase, and for a base year that is the year you sign.

A team of 65 needs roughly 11,375 square feet, which is what the floors shown below are picked for. Say a floor of 11,375 square feet asks $70 on a seven-year term: one free month per lease year comes to seven months, about $464,000 of rent. No outcome is promised here. The point is the scale of what sits outside the face rent.

Which companies gain most from a broker on their side

Any tenant facing a professionally represented landlord. The owner has a listing agent, an attorney and a record of every deal the building has done. A tenant negotiating alone has none of the three. The gap is widest for a company signing its first long lease and for one renewing in place, where the landlord assumes you will not move.

From search to move-in: what the service covers around the negotiation

We write the requirement, build the shortlist, run the tours and order test fits on the finalists. We request proposals, compare them, and negotiate the letter of intent. Your attorney reviews the lease while we hold the landlord to the agreed terms. Where construction is needed, our construction management team carries the project to move-in. How to negotiate an office lease covers the full list of terms.