What questions should every business ask before starting an office search?

Who will be representing you in this process?

Before briefing anyone, it is worth understanding who in the process will be working exclusively for your business. In commercial real estate, the majority of advisers hold what is known as a dual mandate. They represent both landlords and tenants, sometimes in the same buildings and occasionally in the same transactions. That creates a structural dynamic that shapes the advice you receive, even when the adviser is acting professionally.

Tenant-only representation removes that dynamic entirely. A tenant-only adviser has no landlord relationships to protect and no competing instruction to manage. Every recommendation, on which properties to pursue, on what terms to push for, on when to walk away, comes from one place: your business interests.

It is the first question to ask, and the answer should be clear before you proceed.

When should you start?

Earlier than most businesses do. The commercial property market rewards preparation. Businesses that begin the process with sufficient lead time, typically twelve to eighteen months before a lease event, arrive at negotiations with options, with competitive tension, and without the pressure of a deadline forcing the decision.

At Spacepoint, we begin with a market briefing before a search formally starts. That gives clients a current, honest read of what is available, what is genuinely negotiable, and what the right timing looks like given the specifics of their situation.

What does your business actually need from its workspace?

This question is deceptively simple. The honest answer requires thinking beyond the immediate pressure and into what the business needs over the term of the next lease.

How is the team likely to grow or change? What does the space need to communicate to clients and prospective employees? How does the organisation work day to day, and has that changed since the last lease was signed? Are there operational requirements, location constraints, or culture considerations that should shape the brief before the search begins?

There is a further dimension worth building into that thinking. Since working patterns changed, the workspace has become directly relevant to talent acquisition and retention. Employees now have more influence over how and where they work, which has raised the stakes for what the office needs to be when people are there. A space that offers well-considered environments for focused work and collaboration, alongside facilities and amenities that make the working day genuinely worthwhile, does more than meet a functional requirement. It signals that the organisation has thought carefully about the people working within it. For businesses competing in the same talent market, that signal carries weight.

These questions are worth spending time on. They change the brief, and a better brief produces a better search.