Stay and refurbish, or relocate to a new office? This tool brings together three layers of decision-making: it benchmarks relocation costs against upgrading your existing space, breaks down lease offers into comparable components, and highlights potential “red flags” that can disrupt your timeline even after agreements are signed.
As a Design & Build expert, we provide a proprietary decision engine built on real project data. Use our calculators to accurately estimate your CAPEX, validate the true Total Cost of Occupancy (TCO), and identify technical and contractual risks before they impact your investment.
This module combines three decision layers. First, it compares the scenario of staying in your current office against relocation, then breaks lease offers down into comparable components, and finally highlights legal and technical red flags that can derail your budget or timeline after the documents have already been signed.
The system compares the cost of refurbishing your current office against a full relocation, including reinstatement, logistics, time, rent overlap, and the cost of temporary solutions.
At the end, you receive a recommendation together with a decision risk index. This is a supporting heuristic, not an objective credit-style rating.
The scenarios are modelled on real cash flow over time, with entry costs distributed more realistically than under a simple flat monthly allocation.
This is an indicative model. Its purpose is to structure the investment decision and capture items that are usually missed at the early stage.
The mode below changes only the interpretation of the recommendation, not the financial model itself or the NPV calculation.
The result will show whether refurbishing the current office or relocating to a new space is the more rational economic decision.
The system will show the difference between the scenarios after discounting entry costs, exit costs, rent, and risk.
This is not a simple rent comparison. The tool calculates the true cost of entry after taking into account landlord contribution, rent-free months, fit-out top-up, service charges, incoming standard, and the cost of time.
Once we add tenant-side fit-out budget, service charges, additional operating costs, incoming standard, and the cost of time, the ranking of offers can change completely.
First, we define a consistent comparison framework. This ensures the ranking is driven by actual differences between offers, not by inconsistent input data.
The cost of time is applied only to weeks beyond the acceptable entry benchmark, not to the entire programme.
The system will show which offer provides the best overall balance after taking into account base rent, service charges, landlord contribution, rent-free months, tenant fit-out top-up, additional costs, incoming standard adjustment, and NPV.
This layer captures the risks that do not show up in a spreadsheet alone: problematic lease clauses, building constraints, missing technical confirmations, and gaps in the delivery standard.
Even a financially attractive offer may still be the wrong decision if the lease contains blockers or the building cannot support the programme, power, ventilation, or logistics you need.
Tick the constraints that apply to the offer, building, or process being analysed. The module will calculate an overall risk score and indicate the priority actions.
The module will show whether the offer or building requires a full legal and technical audit before any further decision is made.
The Total Cost of Occupancy calculator shows the full cost of the decision over time, but its output depends on whether the office area has been matched correctly to the team and what the real cost of preparing the space will be. That is why it is worth validating both the test fit and the fit-out budget as well.
Verify workplace capacity, programme feasibility, and whether the assumed office area makes operational sense for the team, meeting rooms, private offices, and shared spaces.
Estimate the cost of fit-out, MEP works, glazing, built-in joinery, AV/IT, and finish standard, so you can see the full cost of the decision — not only in rent, but also at the start of the project.
Together, these three calculators create the Ecoffices decision framework: space requirement → investment cost → occupancy cost.
In real business conditions, the question “should we stay or relocate?” is almost never a question about rent alone. In the Ecoffices decision model, it is a question about the total cost of the decision, its impact on the organisation, programme, timeline, cash exposure, workplace quality, legal risk and technical feasibility. That is exactly why a professional office review should not stop at a simple comparison of rental rates per square metre. According to the Ecoffices methodology, it should cover office lease TCO — the full cost of occupying, upgrading or changing workplace — together with NPV, entry cost, exit cost, operating costs, landlord contribution, free rent, service charge, make-good, peak cash, delays, temporary solutions, delivery standard, lease flexibility and the real red flags that can destabilise the project after a board-level decision has already been made.
From the perspective of an investor, CFO, board member, workplace lead, facilities team or project manager responsible for a new office, the key issue is not which option looks best in a broker comparison sheet, but which option actually stands up financially and operationally. In other words: a company is not choosing between two addresses. It is choosing between two or three different business scenarios. One may mean staying in the current office and refurbishing in a live environment. Another may mean relocating to a new Grade A building, but with high CAPEX and a demanding timeline. A third may look attractive thanks to the landlord package, while offering a weak entry standard, low technical certainty or lease provisions that materially limit tenant flexibility.
That is why, in a mature office review, the right focus is not “cost per metre” but cost per scenario. Only then can a company answer honestly whether it should stay, refurbish, renegotiate the lease, or proceed with relocation and benchmark specific offers. This is the logic embedded in the Ecoffices scenario framework, which is much closer to the real-world dynamics of fit-out, office leasing, HQ relocation and workplace investment management than a simple spreadsheet built on one rental rate.
One of the most common mistakes in office analysis is to focus on base rent. That is understandable: it is the easiest number to compare, the most visible figure in broker summaries, and the simplest metric to communicate upward. The problem is that base rent is only one part of the total occupancy cost. If an organisation compares only headline rent, nominal monthly rent, or a basic lease number, it ignores the cost layers that, in many projects, have more influence on the final outcome than the starting rental rate itself.
In reality, a company pays not only rent, but also service charge, fit-out cost, additional operating costs linked to after-hours use, logistics, reinstatement of the current premises, potential early exit costs, and often the cost of temporary workplace solutions. In a stay scenario, the business must also account for refurbishment cost, phasing, operational disruption, temporary team moves, restricted usability of parts of the office, and often revised commercial terms after lease renewal. The more complex the organisation and the more demanding the workplace programme, the more important these layers become.
That is exactly why the total cost of office occupancy should be modelled broadly. Base rent may be a useful headline in an offer, but it is a poor basis for making an investment decision.
Office TCO — Total Cost of Occupancy, or in broader board terms, Total Cost of Decision — is not a simple sum of fees. In the Ecoffices methodology, it is a decision model designed to show how much the full scenario costs the organisation over time, in cash terms and in risk terms. That means bringing together recurring costs, one-off costs, project-related costs, technical costs, operating costs and measurable quality-related effects in a single analytical view.
In a professional TCO model, it matters not only how much a given cost is, but also when it occurs. From a board perspective, there is a major difference between a cost spread over 60 months and a cost concentrated in the first 4–6 months of a project. The same nominal total may imply a completely different level of cash risk, management pressure and financial planning consequence.
Staying in the current office is often mistakenly treated as a low-cost or no-cost option. In reality, it is also an investment scenario — and in many cases a more operationally demanding one than the team assumes at the outset. If a company plans an office refurbishment, a functional reconfiguration, improved acoustics, new meeting rooms, upgraded shared areas, a refreshed workplace identity or a better work standard, then it is entering a project with its own budget, programme, delivery constraints and risks.
A key issue here is that refurbishment is often delivered in a live office. That means phasing, longer programme duration, after-hours works, reduced workplace comfort, temporary loss of access to parts of the space, and sometimes the need for a swing space or other temporary arrangement. If those elements are not priced properly, the stay scenario will look artificially simpler and cheaper than it really is.
There is also another aspect that is often ignored: the remaining term of the current lease. If a company has a favourable rent today but the lease expires in 8, 10 or 12 months, then the “stay” scenario cannot be modelled as if the current commercial terms will apply throughout the full analysis horizon. Once the current term ends, the tenant typically enters lease renewal discussions, revised rental terms, revised conditions, and often a new commitment period. That is why, in the Ecoffices framework, a proper stay analysis should have two phases: the remaining current term and the post-renewal term.
From both project management and finance perspectives, that means the stay option should be analysed as rigorously as relocation. The model should account for refurbishment cost per square metre, refurbishment time, phasing time, operational disruption cost, swing space, contingency, programme impact, and the financial conditions after lease renewal. Only then can it be compared fairly with a move to a new office.
Relocation is usually perceived as the more visible investment scenario, because everyone understands that a new office requires a budget to enter. The challenge is that, in practice, relocation also carries the highest number of costs that tend to be omitted, blurred or treated too optimistically. That is why, in the Ecoffices relocation model, the focus is not just on the new rent and the new building, but on the full chain of costs around the move.
The first layer is obviously base rent and service charge in the new location. The second is the cost of fitting out the new office, which may vary depending on delivery standard, user programme, building quality, MEP complexity, material standard and the organisation’s expectations for the final workplace. The third layer is the landlord contribution, which can reduce the tenant-side entry cost. The fourth is the cost of exit from the existing office: make-good, final settlement, potential early exit penalties and move logistics.
In many cases, that fourth layer is the most underestimated. A company sees an attractive offer in a new building, receives several months of free rent and a declared landlord contribution toward fit-out, and then discovers that reinstating the old office, moving, rent overlap and temporary solutions absorb a large part of the new office’s apparent financial advantage. From a TCO perspective, relocation cannot be judged only through the quality of the new workplace. It must also be judged through the cost of leaving the current one.
In lease offers, one of the most important commercial parameters is the landlord contribution, sometimes referred to as a tenant improvement allowance, contribution or fit-out support budget. For a tenant, it is one of the most important entry economics parameters — and also one of the most misunderstood.
In simplified analyses, landlord contribution is often treated as a straightforward discount: the fit-out costs a certain amount, the landlord pays a certain share, so the balance is the tenant’s cost. That is convenient, but too optimistic. In reality, what matters is not only the amount, but also the settlement structure, the timing of recovery and the real ability to capture the full value.
Some contributions are reimbursed only after invoices are submitted, some only after completion, some in stages, and some depend on prior approval of scope or eligible cost categories. That means landlord contribution can improve NPV, but may not reduce peak cash at the start of the project to the degree suggested by a simple static calculation. For a CFO or board, that distinction is fundamental.
That is why a robust relocation model should distinguish whether the landlord contribution is paid upfront, reimbursed against invoices or settled after completion, and should include a prudence factor for real recoverability. This avoids artificially overstating the attractiveness of relocation.
In lease offer analysis, the monthly and long-term parameters also matter greatly: free rent, rent indexation and service charge. Free rent improves entry economics, but does not always compensate for a high fit-out cost or a weak landlord package. Service charge, meanwhile, may receive less attention than base rent, but over a long lease term it can materially alter the full cost of occupancy.
The same applies to indexation. The difference between a mild escalation formula and an aggressive mechanism with no safeguards can create a materially different nominal result and NPV over several years. That is why, in the Ecoffices lease benchmarking approach, professional offer analysis never stops at asking for rent and rent-free months. It also addresses cost growth over time and the effect of the escalation structure on the full occupancy cost.
In office decision-making, it is essential to distinguish between the sum of nominal costs and net present value. Two scenarios may have a similar nominal total, but impose very different pressure on the company over time. One may require large upfront outlays, while another spreads the burden more evenly. For a board or finance team, these are not minor details. They directly affect perceived affordability, internal funding pressure and risk tolerance.
Office NPV allows a company to assess a scenario not as a static cost table, but as a sequence of cash flows. Fit-out cost, relocation cost, make-good, rent, service charge, free rent, landlord contribution and contingency can then be compared with their timing taken into account. This is far closer to reality than a simple statement of “how much this will cost over five years”.
In practice, NPV is often what reveals that an apparently stronger offer loses its advantage once timing is included — or, conversely, that a higher-rent option performs better because of a stronger landlord package, shorter delivery period and lower tenant-side entry cost.
Alongside NPV, one of the most valuable board-level metrics is peak cash need — the largest monthly cash burden generated by a given scenario. This is extremely useful in practice, because two options may have a similar total cost and yet one may require much more cash commitment at the start.
This is especially important in relocation scenarios, where the business may face in a short period: fit-out cost, logistics cost, first costs of the new office, final settlement of the old office, rent overlap and still-incomplete recovery of landlord contribution. If the model does not show peak cash, it may suggest the scenario is financially comfortable, even though for several months it can put significant pressure on liquidity.
Another very practical metric is cash-out in the first 12 months. This is particularly clear and useful for board review, because it shows how much the decision will consume in the short horizon immediately after the project begins. In many cases, that view — rather than a five-year cost total — is the more relevant one for internal planning and capital allocation.
One of the most underestimated elements in relocation analysis is rent overlap — the period during which the company effectively carries both the old and the new office cost at the same time. In real projects, overlap does not always start from day one and does not always follow a flat pattern, but it almost always has financial impact. If a relocation model does not include double-running cost, its result is usually too optimistic.
Then there is delay risk. Many companies assume the delivery programme is linear and predictable, while in reality time to occupy depends on building approvals, contractor availability, MEP clashes, design complexity, BMS and fire strategy approvals, delivery logistics, out-of-hours restrictions and decision speed on the tenant side. That is why it is good practice to define an acceptable entry-time benchmark and measure the cost of weeks beyond that threshold.
This is much more honest than penalising the entire programme with a single arbitrary multiplier. It measures not the cost of time itself, but the cost of time above an acceptable level. That is extremely useful in management discussions, because it distinguishes a normal workplace project from one that is moving into organisational risk territory.
A professional lease offer analysis cannot ignore the question of what condition the space is delivered in. The difference between a partly fitted workplace, a Cat A office and a space closer to Shell & Core has major implications for the entry budget. The same applies to quality differences between offers. Two offices may have identical area and similar rent, yet require a very different tenant-side investment because one provides a stronger starting point, better infrastructure and less reconfiguration scope.
That is why, in the Ecoffices offer model, it makes sense to apply an entry standard adjustment. Not to complicate the model for its own sake, but to capture differences that are not visible on the first page of the offer. A positive adjustment may mean the space is more demanding than the summary suggests. A negative adjustment may mean the existing condition genuinely improves entry economics.
Many office analyses treat capital expenditure in a binary way: the cost is incurred, therefore it should be fully absorbed inside the analysis horizon. That approach is conservative, but not always fully fair. Some investments clearly have useful life beyond the chosen review period. That applies both to refurbishment of the existing office and to fit-out of a new one.
This is not about artificially inflating the attractiveness of a project. It is about showing that part of the investment may retain residual value, and therefore may not be economically consumed in full by the end of the chosen horizon. This is particularly sensible in models intended to support strategic discussion, rather than simply close an accounting period.
Even a highly developed TCO model does not replace qualitative judgement. That is why, in a professional office leasing and relocation review, the financial layer should be complemented by a layer of legal, technical and contextual red flags. This is the layer that identifies risks that may not yet be priced at the start of the project, but can quickly turn into cost, delay or delivery failure.
On the legal side, the most important red flags usually include restrictive make-good scope, no sublease or assignment right, lack of real flexibility mechanisms, unfavourable indexation, unclear after-hours cost provisions and too little free rent relative to entry cost. On the technical side, the most common issues are unconfirmed electrical capacity, limited after-hours ventilation, difficult delivery logistics, installation constraints, complex building procedures, insufficient programme fit and poor-quality or incomplete technical information.
These are the elements that determine whether an offer is merely commercially attractive or actually suitable for further progression. For that reason, a good analysis should not only produce a risk score, but should break it into layers — legal, technical and contextual — and translate it into specific recommendations: lease audit, technical due diligence, test fit, confirmation of electrical load, clarification of delivery standard, or refinement of lease terms.
A well-structured office analysis should proceed in stages. First, the organisation compares stay and refurbish against relocation in a broad scenario model. At this stage, the goal is not yet to choose a specific building, but to answer whether relocation makes sense at all once entry cost, exit cost, time, peak cash, current lease conditions and organisational impact are properly accounted for.
If relocation starts to make sense, only then does it become worth moving into stage two: lease offer analysis. This is where several broker or landlord options are benchmarked in parallel using the same methodology: rent, service charge, free rent, landlord contribution, entry standard adjustment, cost of time, NPV, peak cash and first-year cash-out. Only the offers that are sound not just commercially, but also from an investment standpoint, should make it to the shortlist.
Stage three is the red flag review — the legal and technical filter. In the Ecoffices decision logic, this stage should be completed before the final board recommendation, not after a preferred option has already been chosen. That way, the company does not lose time pursuing an option that looks good numerically but is weak in deliverability or burdened with problematic lease provisions.
In the office market, lease analysis and fit-out analysis are inseparable. It is not possible to assess a lease offer fairly without understanding what level of works the new space will require, what delivery standard it provides, what the building constraints are, what it will cost to align the office with the programme, and how long the path from decision to occupation will really take.
That means office design, office fit-out, workplace refurbishment and lease analysis should not be treated as separate threads. They are one decision chain. If the tenant does not understand how lease conditions affect fit-out budget and workplace feasibility, it may choose a building that only later proves suboptimal. And if workplace design analysis ignores lease conditions, it may understate the real cost or delivery time. That is why the best outcomes come from a joined-up approach where financial analysis, technical review and workplace planning work together.
A board does not simply need to know which offer has the lowest rent. It needs answers to more important questions. Which scenario has the strongest economic balance after discounting the cash flows? Which has the lowest peak cash? Which carries the lowest delivery risk? Which provides the greatest flexibility over time? Which building best supports the organisation’s programme and operating needs? Which risks are acceptable, and which should stop the process until further audit is carried out?
Only that level of information allows office decisions to be discussed strategically. Without it, organisations often fall into one of two opposite mistakes: either they stay too long in a space that no longer supports their needs, or they move too quickly into a relocation that turns out to be more expensive, more complex and more risky than first assumed.
The decision to stay, refurbish or relocate should be treated as an investment decision. That means modelling not only the lease itself, but the total cost of the decision. It means recognising that staying also has cost and risk. It means pricing entry into the new office honestly. It means treating landlord contribution realistically. It means remembering that exit also costs money, and that time has a cost as well. It also means distinguishing between nominal cost and NPV, and between total cost and peak cash or first-year cash-out.
It is equally important to understand that a good analysis does not end with a financial table. It must also go through the legal and technical red flag filter, because only then can a company say that an offer is not merely attractive, but also safe and deliverable. That is exactly why the Ecoffices proprietary decision model combines three perspectives: scenario comparison, lease offer analysis and red flag assessment. This structure is far closer to real-world office decision-making than a traditional comparison of rent and area.
If an organisation wants to make office decisions consciously, it should look more broadly: at TCO, NPV, entry cost, exit cost, timeline, service charge, free rent, landlord contribution, delivery standard, fit-out, make-good, peak cash, technical risk and lease flexibility. Only once these elements are assembled into one coherent picture — as they are in the Ecoffices model — can the business answer the most important question: is it better to stay, refurbish the current office, or relocate — and which lease offer is actually worth choosing.
The Ecoffices calculator compares two primary scenarios: staying and refurbishing the current office, versus relocating to a new workplace.
This is not a simple rent-per-sqm calculator. It is an Ecoffices decision model designed to show which option is more rational economically and operationally.
No. A lower base rent does not automatically mean a lower office TCO.
In the Ecoffices methodology, the real attractiveness of an offer depends on the combined effect of:
It is common for an offer with a higher headline rent to perform better after full modelling, because it comes with a stronger landlord package, a shorter programme and a lower real entry cost.
Office TCO means the total cost of the decision, not just rent.
That is exactly why an Ecoffices TCO analysis is far more useful for board-level decision-making than a simple comparison of rental rates.
Because the “stay” scenario cannot be modelled as if the current rent applied throughout the full analysis horizon.
If the current lease ends in 8, 10 or 12 months, the tenant will usually move into a new rent level, revised commercial terms or a fresh negotiation with the landlord. That means staying in the office is also a time-sensitive scenario.
A proper Ecoffices analysis therefore separates:
Make-good is the cost of reinstating the old premises to the condition required at handback to the landlord.
In practice, this is one of the most frequently overlooked relocation costs. A new-building offer may look attractive, but once make-good is added, the economic advantage can shrink materially.
Landlord contribution improves entry economics, but it does not always act like immediate cash in hand.
From the tenant’s perspective, three things matter:
In practice, landlord contribution may be settled:
That is why an offer with a strong landlord contribution may still look good in NPV, while generating high peak cash on the tenant side in the first months.
Free rent improves entry economics, but it does not replace a full TCO review.
Rent-free months matter because they reduce the early-stage burden of the lease. That does not automatically mean that an offer with more free rent is the better one.
NPV allows scenarios to be compared with the timing of cost taken into account.
The same amount spent today and the same amount spent in two or three years do not have the same economic weight. That is why a professional analysis should not stop at nominal cost.
All of this should be treated as cash flow over time. That is exactly what NPV is for, and why it is built into the Ecoffices decision framework.
These are two highly practical indicators showing the real financial burden of the project.
Two options may have similar NPV or nominal cost, while being completely different in terms of how much cash must be committed at the start. For a CFO or board, this is often just as important as the total cost itself.
In practice, the right view is the full chain: design, approvals, delivery and move-in to the completed office.
The timeline depends on the delivery standard of the space, office size, programme complexity and building procedures. The more approvals and changes along the way, the higher the risk of delay.
Yes, but a refurbishment delivered in a live office has its own cost and its own risks.
That is why staying and refurbishing should never be treated as a “no-cost” option. In the Ecoffices approach, it is a full investment scenario that should be modelled just as rigorously as relocation.
The better the input data, the lower the risk of error in TCO and programme modelling.
The most dangerous risks are the ones not yet priced, but highly capable of changing the budget or the programme.
On the legal side:
On the technical side:
Yes — if the goal is to show the real budget of the decision, not only the bare construction cost.
In many organisations, these elements are exactly what create the gap between an initial fit-out estimate and the real investment budget.
When the full commercial and operational balance is better than the rent headline alone suggests.
Relocation may still be the stronger option despite a higher rent if:
That is exactly why lease offers should be benchmarked through a TCO framework according to the Ecoffices model, not through base rent alone.
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