which can be as simple as a street map with flags denoting available properties. Such a map provides the decision makers within the firm a basic but helpful tool to assess the location of the buildings in relation to one another, as well as location of the buildings in the city. While most professionals are generally familiar with the more prominent buildings in a particular city, many of which are found within the CBD, if the firm is considering office space outside the CBD, a map can help clear up any confusion about building locations.

Surrounding Area/Facilities* The condition of the area immediately surrounding the office building is also important. The professional services firm would not want to office in an upscale, Class A building in a rough or unsafe neighborhood. Although the firm can and should consult a map to better understand where the available office buildings are located, the decision makers in the firm should be familiar with the areas surrounding the potential office buildings. If the firm is not familiar with the surroundings of any potential office buildings, the decision makers in the firm should, at a minimum, take the time to drive by the buildings and perhaps walk through the neighborhood.

Additionally, the professional services firm should have a general idea about the retail facilities and restaurants in the area immediately surrounding the office building. While office buildings located in the CBD of many cities provide professional services firms with a wide variety of retail services and restaurant alternatives, this is not true of all cities and locations. Moreover, office buildings located in smaller business centers or office parks may not provide the firm with sufficient retail options. Such options are important not only for the benefit of the professionals and staff who are employed at the firm but also for the clients and potential clients who will visit the firms office.

Office Design and Layout. When offering to lease or sublease office space, landlords or their agents will prepare floor plans that depict the layout of the space. If the office space is not finished out, the floor plan will reflect little more than where the office space is located on the floor, whether it is less than the whole floor, and where the demising walls are located. However, if the space has been finished out, as is often the case with subleases, the firm can get a good idea of the office design and layout simply by reviewing the floor plan. While it may be difficult to rule out potential office space simply by reviewing the layout, the firm can get a good idea of whether the current layout would be acceptable or whether a significant amount of construction would be required to bring the office space in line with the firms needs.

In some cases, the landlord includes in its marketing materials photographs of the office building and the space for lease. Although photographs

do not obviate the need for a thorough property inspection, they can provide the firm with a decent superficial look at the quality of the building and potential office space.

Building History. In addition to reviewing any available office floor plans and photographs, the professional services firm should seek basic background on each potential office building, including the year the building was constructed, the building classification (A, B, or C), and the percentage of office space that is currently vacant. Moreover, the firm should ask whether and to what extent there have been environmental, zoning, or other major issues with a particular building, and if so, whether such problems have been satisfactorily remediated.

Landlord and Property Manager. The professional services firm will encounter a number of different types of landlords when searching for office space. Landlords can range from very sophisticated real estate investment trusts (REITs) to less sophisticated individual owners. While landlords who have the same organizational structure do not always act in the same manner, in general, the more sophisticated the landlord is, the longer it will take to negotiate and agree to a lease. Often, larger institutional owners have very lengthy and complicated standard lease forms that contain a multitude of provisions, some superfluous and some relevant, that the professional services firm will need to carefully review, comment on, and negotiate with the landlord. This very time-consuming and costly process is only exacerbated if the organizational bureaucracy within the building owner includes the usual complement of real estate professionals, property managers, and lawyers.

On the other hand, if the landlord is an individual owner, he or she may not be inclined to a particularly sophisticated form of lease and may elect to save time and money by involving fewer people in the leasing process than the more sophisticated landlord. Moreover, in most cases, the individual owner will not have the financial resources and backing that larger institutional owners enjoy and, thus, may be more motivated to negotiate with and procure tenants in an effort to ensure steady cash flow in order to meet mortgage obligations on the property.

In addition to doing basic research on the size and sophistication of the landlords who are offering commercial office space, the firm should inquire about the reputation of the landlords. As is true with residential landlords, commercial landlords can vary dramatically in the manner in which they deal with tenant concerns and questions. The real estate community in most areas is fairly close knit, and, with little effort, the firm should be able to ascertain a particular landlords reputation and determine whether the landlord is known for responsiveness (or lack thereof), flexibility and willingness to meet unanticipated tenant needs, which will invariably arise over the term of any lease.

The firm should inquire not only about the ownership at each of the available office buildings but also about the property management company that the landlord has selected to manage the building. The building manager is often a tenants main point of contact in an office building and the individual to whom the landlord has entrusted responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of the building. Thus, it is critically important that the property manager have a good working relationship with the current tenants in the building and that the building manager has demonstrated the ability to promptly resolve the various kinds of issues that arise in all office buildings, which can range from minor janitorial issues (e.g., keeping restrooms cleaned and stocked) to more significant engineering problems (e.g., flooding or midsummer HVAC outages).

There are a wide variety of property management companies, from very small building management companies who are responsible for only a handful of buildings, to larger nationwide companies that manage buildings in many different cities. While the latter may provide the professional services firm with a higher degree of comfort, at least on a superficial level, the firm should nonetheless seek the input of other tenants about the building management company, as even the largest property management companies can experience varying levels of service between different cities and even between different buildings in the same city.

Tenants. Before the firm narrows down the list of office buildings to those that it will visit and inspect, the firm should informally assess the other major tenants in the available office buildings. It is important that the firm determine whether any competitors are already tenants in the building and, if so, whether their presence would be an impediment to servicing existing clients or attracting new clients. For example, if an accounting firm (50 to 100 professionals) is considering office space in a number of buildings and one of those buildings is generally referred to by the name of one of its larger competitors (e.g., the KPMG Building), the firm should assess whether and to what extent its business would be impacted by the presence of that competitor. Additionally, the professional services firm should try to determine whether there are any unsavory or objectionable tenants in the building who might reflect poorly on the firm.

Parking. Parking is one of the hidden costs that can add to the overall expense of a lease; thus, the firm should ask whether parking spaces are included in the rent and, if so, how many spaces. The number of parking spaces that a landlord is willing to provide a tenant free of charge is usually determined by a predetermined ratio of parking spaces per square feet of leased office space. Thus, for example, if the total lease size is 10,000 square feet and the landlord is willing to provide one parking space per every 1,000 square feet of leased space, the tenant will be provided 10 parking spaces at