Most companies will sign an office lease for a period of 3 years, with an option to renew (2 or 3 years).

The common practice is for Tenants to inform the landlord of their decision to stay or leave no later than 3-6 months before the end of their lease (depending on what was communicated). After this stipulated deadline, if the Tenant is still not ready to sign on a renewal, the building management will go ahead and list the office as available for rent.

What does this mean?

1. Your office is no longer reserved for you. Anyone can now sign a lease for your office starting from your lease expiry date.
2. You will get random visitors viewing your office
3. Under pressure, you might end up signing for the renewal even if you are not fully certain that is the right business decision.

Tenants get caught in the above scenario usually because of these reasons:

• See the lease expiry notices too late
• Did not give sufficient lead time time to search for alternatives
• Did not notice the deadline written in Tenancy agreement and building management did not give any heads-up

Hence, to avoid getting into such a stressful situation, it is best to note your office’s lease expiry date and give your company sufficient time to prepare for a decision. We recommend our clients to look into alternatives 5 – 8 months before lease expiry.

Note: For serviced offices/ co-working spaces, the contract is auto-renewed if you do not inform them that you want to terminate the lease in time.

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