17 Dec As a landlord, what concessions should I NEVER make when signing an office lease?

Never is a very strong word, a word that is personally out of my lexicon, and that holds true here. There’s not really any certain thing that you should NEVER do as a landlord. Since each landlord’s situation varies widely, from your situation with your building to your particular tenants, it really depends on your goals and what the business is asking for.

That said, there are definitely things that I would recommend steering clear of. One thing in particular would be making substantial changes to your building or to a space that would drastically change the use of the space or change it into a super specialized use.

It’s common to make changes to a commercial space for a new client so the space fits their needs, and sometimes this means making substantial changes. But if a tenant is coming in and looking at a shorter term, like a 1, 2, or 3 year lease, you need to make sure that the changes you’re making to the space are going to be viable for a future tenant.

Depending on the changes that you make, you want to make sure that you won’t have to spend additional money on the back end to change the space back to one that is appealing to a future tenant. The only time these types of drastic changes would be advisable is if you want to change your target tenant into one that would use the new space without requesting many changes. But if you’re not willing to change the use of the building, then staying away from drastic changes that change the use of the space is one to really steer clear of.