The single largest expense most Houston businesses sign for — outside of payroll — is their office lease. A 10,000-square-foot deal at $30/SF with a five-year term commits the tenant to $1.5 million in base rent before a single concession is layered in. Negotiated well, that same lease can carry a tenant improvement allowance worth $500,000 to $750,000, six to twelve months of free rent, an early-termination right, and an option to renew at a capped rate. Negotiated badly — or worse, negotiated by the tenant alone with the landlord’s broker on the other side of the table — that same lease leaves money on the table that the business will never get back.

That gap is what tenant representation exists to close. Here is how we work it in Houston, and what we have routinely been able to win for clients who bring us in early enough to use the leverage they did not know they had.

What tenant representation actually is

A tenant rep broker represents the tenant — exclusively. The landlord has their own broker, who is paid to maximize the landlord’s return. We sit on the other side of that table, paid the same way (out of the lease, at no direct cost to the tenant), but with a fiduciary obligation that runs only to you. That single structural fact is what unlocks every tactic below. It is also the difference most Houston business owners do not understand until they have signed a deal without us, looked at the comp set six months later, and realized what they actually could have had.

Dual representation — using one broker who works “with” both sides — is legal in Texas, and it is also the situation in which we have seen the most one-sided lease terms get slipped past tenants who trusted the friendly face across the table. We do not do dual rep. The structure is the leverage.

Why Houston is a tenant’s market right now

Houston office vacancy has been sitting in the mid-twenties percent range for years — a hangover from the 2014 energy downturn that 2020 made permanently worse. Class A buildings in submarkets like Westchase, Energy Corridor, and Greenway are routinely 25–30% vacant. A meaningful share of available space is sublease inventory, which means an existing tenant is paying rent on space they no longer want and is highly motivated to fill it at almost any price.

What this means for you, the tenant: landlords are competing harder for credit-quality tenants than they have in any market in two decades. The face rate on the marketing flyer is the starting point. The actual deal — net effective rent after concessions — is often 30–40% lower. Tenants who do not know the gap exists end up paying the face rate. Tenants who do, do not.

How we get to 20%+ TI upgrades

Tenant improvement allowance (“TI”) is the dollar amount per square foot the landlord contributes toward the build-out of your space — paint, flooring, conference rooms, finishes, IT cabling, all of it. In Houston Class A right now, asking TI ranges run $50–$75 per SF for renewals and $75–$100+ for new leases on raw or second-generation space. Those are the numbers the landlord starts with. They are not the numbers the deal closes at.

Here is how we close the gap to 20%+ over the asking allowance:

  • Run a real competitive process. We almost never let a tenant negotiate with a single building. We tour three to five comparable spaces, write LOIs (letters of intent) at all of them, and let the landlords see they have competition. The TI number tightens fast when a landlord knows their building is one of three.
  • Quantify the build cost. We bring a contractor in for a budget read on the actual scope — open ceiling, glass-front offices, real conference rooms, the kitchen the team wants. When we ask for $90/SF instead of $75/SF, we hand the landlord a contractor estimate that justifies the ask. Vague requests get vague counters; documented ones do not.
  • Trade term for TI. Landlords amortize TI over the lease term. A seven-year deal absorbs more TI than a five-year deal at the same monthly cost to the landlord. If the tenant is willing to commit, we can often pull an extra $15–$25 per SF in allowance for the additional two years.
  • Push for “above-standard” line items. Asking TI usually assumes “building standard” finishes. We negotiate explicit allowances for above-standard items — upgraded glass, demountable walls, supplemental HVAC, AV cabling — as separate budget lines that do not eat the base TI.

How we structure 6+ months of free rent

Free rent (also called “rent abatement” or “concession months”) is months of base rent the landlord credits the tenant — usually applied to the front of the term. The Houston rule of thumb has historically been one month of free rent per year of term, but in this market we routinely close at one and a half to two months per year, sometimes more on longer deals.

On a seven-year deal, that is 10–14 months of free rent. We have closed deals in the last twelve months at the high end of that range and beyond. The moves that get there:

  • Separate the build-out period from the abatement. The construction period — three to five months for a typical office build — should be free, and so should additional concession months on top. Some landlords try to merge them. We do not let them.
  • Trade abatement against TI, not rent. Landlords care most about the headline face rate (it sets the comp for the next deal). They are far more flexible on free rent than on starting rent. We push abatement first, hard.
  • Stack concessions against expansion or extension options. If the tenant grants the landlord something they want — a longer term, a lease guarantee, a recapture right — we extract more abatement on the way in.
  • Time the negotiation to year-end. Landlords with leasing budgets to hit close looser deals in November and December than they do in March. If the tenant has flexibility on when to sign, we use it.

The single mistake that costs tenants the most leverage

Calling the landlord directly. Or worse, calling the building’s listing broker directly because the sign on the door said “Available — call this number.” The moment a tenant has substantively engaged a single building without a tenant rep, two things happen: the landlord knows they are not running a competitive process, and the listing broker has the relationship — making it complicated and expensive to bring a tenant rep in later. Concession packages tighten by 10–20% from the moment that first call happens. We have seen it on every deal we have ever rescued mid-stream.

The fix is simple: call us first. Our involvement costs the tenant nothing — our fee is paid by the landlord at lease signing, out of the same budget that funds TI and free rent. Bringing us in early does not reduce the landlord’s appetite to do the deal. It changes the math of how generous the deal needs to be.

When to start the conversation

The right window is 12–18 months before lease expiration for renewals, and 6–9 months before move-in for new leases. That gives us enough runway to run a competitive process, model out scenarios, get LOIs back, and close before pressure builds on either side. Tenants who call us at month three with the lease about to expire still get represented well — but at that point, leverage is already leaking.

If you have a lease coming up, or a new space you are evaluating, the lowest-risk thing you can do is a 30-minute phone call before you send any inquiry to a building. We will tell you what the market looks like for your size and submarket, what concessions are reasonable to target, and whether you should renew, expand, relocate, or wait.

Core CRE
1334 Brittmoore Rd #1327, Houston, TX 77043
Houston Commercial: (832) 981-7299
Email: support@corecretx.com
Designated Broker: Linh Luong, TREC #687812 · Brokerage TREC #9014736