Copyright ©1997-<$mt:date format="%Y"$> Glenn Fleishman except as noted otherwise. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint, contact Glenn Fleishman at glenn at glennf.com. Photo © 2008 Laurence Chen; used with permission.
Copyright ©1997-<$mt:date format="%Y"$> Glenn Fleishman except as noted otherwise. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint, contact Glenn Fleishman at glenn at glennf.com. Photo © 2008 Laurence Chen; used with permission.
Turning technology from mumbo-jumbo into rich tasty gumbo
� Oregon Open Source Mandate | Main | NYT Archives Back (for Now?) �Joel Spolsky has an accidental in-depth article on renting office space in New York. As anyone who rents commercial space finds out, you either become an expert like him or you get dicked over. End of story. There's very very little intermediate space if you're renting in office buildings or from serious landlords in which you get a reasonable lease (not talking about rent but lease terms) unless you behave like an SOB and really cross out parts of the lease and write in new parts.
I've negotiated three leases in the last several years in Seattle, each of which I've learned more than the last. My lawyer has educated me. We didn't, in fact, use a lawyer on the last lease because we were (we still think) so well educated from the last lease, on which we spent a small fortune to have it reviewed and negotiated, but we think it paid off in the end.
Joel's article is good reading and good advice. In Seattle, the situation is similar but much simpler. There's not as much pressure, even during the dotcom period. Buildings tend to be newer. There's either good spaces, decent spaces, or crap, and there's not a lot of those old garment district and heavy industry buildings with lofts that Joel describes in New York.
I've been in Class A space (the Tower Building, owned by the Vance Corporation), and the lease negotiation was straightforward, the final lease fair, the landlord fantastic -- treated us like kings despite only have .84% of the building's space -- and no hidden surprises.
I've been in junk space, a building on Green Lake that, when we moved in, we were told would be torn down to build condos at some point. Fortunately the market collapsed. When our lease was near up, we made a very nice offer to the landlord to pay him about 20 percent above market instead of the nearly 60 or 70 percent above market that we were paying. He thought he'd find tenants, he said, at that rate. (Instead, he moved in with some subletters he found.)
We moved to what's probably accurately called Class C space: no elevator, but only two floors. Full heating, air conditioning, ventilation (just rebuilt from scratch -- we lived through that, but we don't mind now that it's done). Renovated offices. All that included in the rent and no build-out costs because it was built just the way we needed it. And we're paying about what we would have been willing to pay in our junk office that needed a lot of work just to stay in one piece.
Posted by Glennf at April 5, 2003 7:55 PM
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The company I work for just got some space in the Bellevue City Center building. (Ninth floor, so we can't see Mt. Rainier over a building a block or so over, though we do have a decent view of the lake.) I wasn't involved in the negotiations but apparently they got a fantastic deal; in fact, they kept setting new records for the lowest price per square foot ever paid in that building. And then they set another record for lowest price ever paid for parking in the underground garage. It's such a renter's market right now it's not even funny.
I'm with Anita -- I love reading "insider" bits like this.
Posted by: Jerry Kindall at April 11, 2003 9:57 AM
Sometimes, it's just so darn much easier living in a small town. My new office, as of April 1. No lawyers, no big deal lease agreement (just a simple 6 month, take it or leave it), no build out, no stress.
Posted by: Dori Smith at April 6, 2003 3:45 PM
He describes it as accidental: he never really meant to learn this much about real estate. Nor did I.
Posted by: Glenn Fleishman at April 6, 2003 9:58 AM
"Accidental"? did you have another word in mind or am I being dense?
Joel's article has that behind-the-scenes flavor that I always find interesting even when the topic doesn't affect my daily life.
Posted by: Anita Rowland at April 6, 2003 9:47 AM
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