Real Estate Brokerage Firms After the Lease Is Signed: Dates, Documents, Upkeep

Dates to put on the calendar the week you sign

• The renewal option: the first and the last day on which notice can be given.
• Any right to terminate or hand back space: the date, the notice deadline and the fee.
• Expansion and first-offer rights: how many days you have to answer once the landlord writes.
• Each rent step, and the base years for operating expenses and taxes.
• The yearly expense reconciliation, and how long the lease gives you to question it.
• The security deposit's step-downs, and the date the letter of credit itself expires.
• The insurance certificates the lease requires you to renew.
• Expiry, and the rate charged if you stay past it.

A missed option window usually ends the right. Lease options explains how notice is given, and your attorney should confirm the dates and the method in your own lease.

The lease abstract: one page someone else could act on

An abstract is the lease reduced to a single page, written for a person who has never read the document. It holds the premises and rentable square feet, the key dates, the rent by year and how it rises, the base years and the audit right, the security and its schedule, every option with its window, the sublet and assignment terms, who signed the guaranty and what releases it, the restoration duty, and where notices must be sent.

File it beside the lease, and redo the affected lines whenever an amendment is signed. When the person who negotiated the lease leaves the company, the abstract is what stays behind.

Facilities management once the team is in

The building's property manager works for the owner and looks after the lobby, the elevators and the base systems. Inside your own space the work is yours unless you hand it to someone. Facilities management is Nomad's service for that: the cleaning, the repairs and routine maintenance, a stocked pantry, the vendors, and someone to call when something breaks.

The two meet when a problem in your office depends on the building, such as a leak from the floor above or an air-conditioning complaint. A facilities team that knows what the lease obliges the landlord to fix gets those resolved sooner.

When an established tenant should start the next decision

Twelve to 18 months before expiry. That leaves time to see what the market offers and to move if moving wins, since a new floor may need 10 to 16 weeks of construction after its lease is signed. Inside six months the choices narrow, and staying past expiry with no agreement commonly costs one and a half to two times the rent.

The floors below would seat a team of about 80, as a starting point for that check. Renew or relocate sets out how to compare staying with moving.