How long is left on the office lease?

For some letting agencies, their position in the centre of the community is key to their marketing and their success. Other agencies run from a serviced office which is not customer facing and does not rely on a high street position or walk-in clients.

Some buyers will be buying largely on the basis of the office location and the visibility it provides. For those buyers, the situation of the office lease will be vitally important. Other buyers may have no interest in the office at all, and plan to close the location and merge the staff into another office.

You cannot pre-empt what your buyer will want from the office. You can find out what an extension would cost before you need to know.

So you cannot pre-empt what an interested buyer will want with respect to the office lease. However, if the lease is coming up for renewal in the near future, it would make sense to open informal discussions with the landlord to see whether an extension would be possible, and on what terms.

You will then be able to put that in front of any buyer who sees the continued leasing of the premises as critical to the future of the agency, rather than having to go and find out while a deal is live.