London’s office market rewards preparation and punishes companies who walk into it cold. With dozens of submarkets, wide swings in rent between buildings a street apart, and landlords who negotiate hardest with occupiers who look like they don’t know the market, going in without expert support usually costs more than the advisory fee would have.
Start with the brief, not the search
The businesses who get the best outcomes are the ones who define what they actually need before touching a single listing. That means headcount projections over the lease term, non-negotiables like meeting room provision or step-free access, and a realistic view of budget including fit-out and business rates, not just headline rent. SHB’s acquisitions team builds this brief with clients before any viewings happen, because a clear brief is what turns a six-month search into a six-week one.
Access to the full market, not just what’s listed
Plenty of the best space in London never reaches the open market. It moves through relationships between agents, landlords and advisors before a board ever sees it publicly listed. Working with an advisor who has genuine market coverage, across leasehold and flexible workspace, means seeing options that a self-directed search simply won’t surface.
Negotiation is where the real value sits
Finding the space is only half the job. Rent-free periods, break clauses, dilapidations obligations, service charge caps and rent review mechanisms all get negotiated separately, and each one carries real financial weight over a typical five or ten-year term. An occupier negotiating alone is up against a landlord’s agent who does this daily. An advisor levels that up, using current comparable evidence rather than the asking price as the starting point for discussion.
Why data changes the outcome
SHB’s advisors work from proprietary market intelligence across BYTE, LOC8, TERA, SHWR and GIGA, five platforms that between them cover market data, location search, portfolio management and workspace benchmarking. That means a negotiating position built on what’s actually happening in a submarket this quarter, not a landlord’s opening figure. It’s part of why SHB clients have saved more than £60 million over the past two years.
A process built for businesses
SHB acts in the best interest of our client – we have no reason to steer a business toward a building that happens to suit an agency’s other side of the deal. That independence shapes every part of the search and negotiation, from shortlist to signature. For any business weighing up London office space right now, that’s makes all the difference when exploring options objectively.
