With your current office lease expiring three, four or five years from now, there’s always something that’s a higher priority than new leasing negotiations, right?

 Yet it is precisely when lease expiration seems so far away that smart tenants score their biggest leasing coups – deals which will yield competitive advantages. Starting early sometimes results in a lower rent, but that isn’t the point. What early starters angle for are important breaks on costly non-rent lease terms. For example, above-standard building services, meaningful operating expense controls, stronger sublease rights, more flexibility in alterations and improvements, reduced individual liability for partners and limited liability corporate tenants.

Many executives miss these advantages because they start the lease negotiation process late, and they focus on one or two lease terms denominated in dollars, especially rent and workletter allowance. They talk about rent and workletter allowance as if these terms describe the total cost of a lease. Thinking they’ve done their job, they delegate to others the task of working out "the details." But landlords and real estate lawyers who work mainly for landlords are masters of "the details." They work with "the details" everyday. The effect of a reassuring letter of intent can be utterly reversed by "the details." It is in "the details" that seemingly good deals are commonly lost for tenants.

 By failing to make lease negotiations a high priority until expiration is only a couple years away, such chief executives let a valuable advantage slip through their fingers. They lose time needed to focus on "the details." Time lost can never be recovered.

 As you know, deals which seem worth pursuing often dead-end. Landlords don’t tell you at the outset how far they’re willing to go on various points. Only when negotiations are fairly far along are you likely to understand what’s really most important to a landlord and accordingly what trade-offs are available. You need time.

 When time is short, it becomes a gun at your head. You’ll have a tough time quickly finding space that meets your company’s requirements for space, location, electrical capacity, security, transportation, etc. You will have to conclude a deal fast, and landlords you talk with will know it. You will be under intense pressure to make concessions and accept bad terms – if you have time to recognize they are bad terms – because failure to conclude a deal and move out of your current building on time could mean substantial penalties, perhaps costly litigation, lost business.

 Starting early gives you tremendous bargaining leverage. If you start the process, say, five years before your lease expires, you can thoroughly shop the market, analyze competing alternatives and pursue a complicated negotiation. Unexpected snags won’t put you in a bind. In the event a negotiation fails to yield what you need, you can walk away and start over elsewhere. You have time to walk away from two, three, even four negotiations if necessary. Time is on your side.