Fully Fitted Office Space: What Fitted, Furnished and Turnkey Each Promise

Four labels on a listing, and what each commits the landlord to

• Fully fitted, or move-in ready: the construction is complete and the space can be occupied.
• Furnished: the desks, chairs and meeting tables stay. Who owns them at the end, and whose job it is to clear them out, should be written into the lease.
• Plug and play: furnished, with the cabling live. The label often describes a sublease, where a departing company leaves a working office behind.
• Turnkey: the landlord's contractor builds an agreed plan and delivers it finished. You get your own layout, and you wait for the construction.

Pre-built is the landlord's word for a fitted suite it constructed on spec. The pre-built entry covers how the lease on one is written.

The handover checklist for a fitted floor

A label is a claim. These should be true on day one, and the condition language in the lease is where we get them written down:

• Air conditioning running during the hours your team works, with the after-hours rate in writing.
• Lighting, power and data outlets at every desk position, tested.
• A pantry with working plumbing and appliances.
• Meeting rooms and call booths as drawn on the plan, with doors that close.
• If furnished: an inventory attached to the lease, item by item.
• If plug and play: cabling terminated and labeled, and an internet circuit either live or on order.
• A walk-through with a punch list before signing, so worn carpet or a tired finish is fixed or priced. Under an as-is clause you accept the space the way the previous occupant left it.

Whether fitted space asks more per square foot

Often it does, against a raw floor in the same building. The owner spent the construction money up front and gets it back in the rent, where a raw floor would come with an improvement allowance instead. What you avoid is the buildout itself. The buildout guide on this site prices custom construction at $50 to $150 a square foot, with furniture on top.

The block on this page shows one price band of our book, fitted floors and unfitted ones together, so you can see how finished and unfinished space sit side by side at similar asking rents.

Changing a fitted office, and who should take one

A fitted office can still be changed. Cosmetic work such as paint, signage and new furniture rarely meets resistance. Moving a wall needs the landlord's consent, adds weeks, and can come with a duty to rebuild the original layout when you leave. When the layout needs more than that, tour raw space and price a buildout instead.

Fitted space suits a team that has a date to hit, can see its headcount for the length of the lease, and works in the usual mix of open desks, a few meeting rooms and a pantry. It suits less well a firm that wants many private offices where the floor is open, or one that will stay long enough for its own construction to pay back.