If you work as a commercial property agent you will quickly learn that the original brief that a client gives you will often twist and change before you start negotiating and secure a space.  These changes can vary from the size of the space required, to the budget, to the location of the space and even the length of the term a client can commit to. 

Morgan Pryce often act as an acquisition agent for companies that are setting up there first offices in London, moving out of a serviced office or doing their first move in a long time. Therefore for example it can be very difficult to quantify how much space is needed, we usually recommend about 100 sq ft per person but this is rather generous and depending on how a company operates a lot more people can be comfortably fitted into a space. 

The most recent example Morgan Pryce has had with a brief changing was for a client looking for 5,000 sq ft in SE1 or the Docklands. During our original meeting the client specified that they would look to take a 5 year lease with a tenant only break option incorporated into the lease at the 3rd year. This is the most common lease term in Central London for office space of this sort of size. 

We showed them a number of options that fitted the requirement and that could have worked, however we thought it might be interesting to show them a bit of a curve ball. This was in the form of a 5,500 sq ft office on the outskirts of Canary Wharf; this seems to fit the brief you might think. The difference here was that the term on offer was a mutual rolling break after the first year. This short term was reflected in the rental level with a quoting rent of £10 psf. This really attracted the client to the space and after hard negotiations we ended up a £3 psf. which was too good for our client to turn down.

Morgan Pryce is a specialist tenant acquisition agent with offices in Oxford Circus and the City. Morgan Pryce specialises in search, negotiation and project management and works exclusively for tenants.