People like to tell me that I wrote the book on real estate.  To prove it, years ago I published “The Complete Survival Guide to Negotiating An Office Lease (Secrets Your Landlord Doesn’t Want You To Know!)”.  It’s actually still available on Amazon. 

One of the most poignant chapters is titled, “A Square Foot Is Not A Square Foot”.  Here I break down in simple language the confusing story of how Landlords measure square footage in a commercial office building. I clearly explain some of the terms used by real estate professionals like the usable square foot (measurable square foot), a rentable square foot (what you pay rent on), add-on factors (the proportionate share of common area on the floor) and others. 

In the book I outline many of the dangers tenants face when entering the real estate jungle. Like in the game of Jumanji, we find there are many perils and pitfalls in the real estate jungle. 

My clients tell me that the book is as relevant today as it was when it was first written. One of my current clients, a good-sized accounting firm, needed help to find a new home.  Like many companies in 2024, a good number of the office staff is working from home a couple of days a week (hybrid) and so we calculated that their space needs were currently about half of what they were previously, or today around 10,000 square feet. 

A 10,000 square foot office is a sizable one and construction costs in 2024 are very high, which necessitated that we structure the deal as a long-term lease of 10 years so that the Landlord could fully amortize the new buildout.  After a few rounds of negotiations back and forth we were able to come to terms on rent, the buildout of the space and numerous other items. 

As we recommend in the book, we had suggested that our tenant hire their own space planner to design the space for reasons which will become apparent at the end of our story. One of the things we always request designers do is to field measure the space to verify measurements shown on the plan. Field measurements are taken by physically measuring the space.  With today’s laser equipment, this is an easy and accurate process. 

So, what did we find?  It turns out that the space was actually 350 square feet smaller than was indicated on the plan.  Now 350 square feet may sound small, but when you look at the budget impact on a 10 year lease the numbers look like this:

350 square feet x $26 per square foot x 10 years = $91,000

The lesson here is, just because the space is shown on a plan doesn’t mean that it really exists. As we state in the book, good tenant advisors always recommend to our clients that they field-measure the space before signing the lease.  That is why, at Dickstein Real Estate Services, OUR DIFFERENCE IS YOUR ADVANTAGE®!

Regards,

Lawrence Dickstein