Office leasing has a pace problem - and it almost always hurts the tenant.
The old assumptions about timing still circulate: tour this week or next week, no real difference. Take the weekend to review the proposal. Run it by the full executive team before responding. Wait for exact construction numbers before committing. These feel like prudent steps. In practice, for a tenant who has already identified their best option, they are mostly ways to lose it.
In a market with real liquidity, a landlord holding a space you like has options you can’t see. Another tenant in the building may be looking to expand - better credit, higher rent, cleaner deal. A growing company across town may be touring the same floor. The landlord may get a call from an institutional tenant that changes their thinking about the building entirely.
None of this is hypothetical. It is the ordinary background activity of an active leasing market. The landlord doesn’t owe you the space because you’ve been negotiating in good faith. They owe you what’s in the signed lease. Until that exists, the deal is open.
There’s also a subtler risk that operates throughout a slow negotiation: rent creep. A landlord who senses hesitation or lack of urgency has less incentive to hold their position. The asking rent that felt like a starting point in week two can look very different by week six if you’ve given no signal that you’re ready to move.
This dynamic is most acute in renewal negotiations, where tenants tend to move the slowest because the cost of inaction feels lowest. You’re already there. Where are you going to go?
The problem is that this logic is visible to your landlord too. A tenant who hasn’t seriously explored alternatives and isn’t ready to make a decision is a tenant with no leverage. The landlord doesn’t need to move. They can wait you out, hold rent, and let the clock work in their favor. The longer you take without a credible alternative in play, the weaker your position becomes.
If the space works - if it’s the most compelling option you’ve seen in the market, if your business is relatively stable, if the economics are reasonable - what is the realistic upside of waiting?
More time rarely produces a better deal. It produces more variables. The space you’ve already decided is the right one gets exposed to the market longer. The landlord’s circumstances may shift. Your own negotiating posture weakens simply by virtue of time passing without a decision.
Gathering information has real value up to a point. Understanding the market, building your alternative set, running the economics - all of it matters. But once you’ve done that work and the answer is clear, the decision to delay is not caution. It’s exposure.
It doesn’t mean signing the first proposal you receive. It means moving with purpose once you’ve done the work. It means responding to proposals promptly, signaling genuine interest to landlords whose spaces are serious candidates, and not letting internal process run longer than the decision actually requires.
The tenants who consistently get the best deals are not the ones who waited the longest. They’re the ones who knew what they wanted, moved when the answer was clear, and didn’t hand the landlord time they didn’t need to have.