Fit-out costs an essential point in selecting a new location
Financial constraints cause most customers in the SME area to move, not necessarily because they have a real need for more space, but because they want to optimize their costs. The costs of rent and maintenance are important. Still, in case of a move, the costs of arranging the new headquarters have a large share: (partitions, IT network, costs with blinds, etc.) that customers want to avoid.
In the relatively recent past, the most sought-after spaces were the open ones, i.e., open, whether it was office buildings or villas. This is because open spaces allow easy customization and adaptation to the requirements of any client. That’s why most office building owners offered this type of space as a great advantage for customers. The new economic situation reverses this situation in favor of those who have partitioned spaces. If until now the clients were willing to invest in the personalization of the space, now they are looking for already partitioned spaces that are as close as possible to the need to place the company’s departments in space.
“I presented to a client 10 building options, all upper class, and I was even thinking of how to prioritize them because they all largely met the client’s requirements. The client solved the simple problem: please show me only the partitioned spaces because we no longer want to invest any money in partitions. In this way, we had to give up a series of buildings from the start, most of them being for the first rent, and to turn our attention only to the partitioned ones.” declares Irina Petrescu ESOP partner.
The obsession with reducing costs causes most customers to compare the offers on the market from the presentation stage, before reaching viewings.
“Many customers ask for detailed situations about maintenance costs and space equipment, compare offers with each other and choose from this stage which offers are worth watching,” says Irina Petrescu from ESOP. In this context, it is clear that those owners who at the same price or even lower offer a better quality of space, whether we are talking about office buildings or villas, and as many facilities specific to the activity of a company ( partitions, blinds, ensuring internet access, etc.).
“If until some time the rule was for a tenant to customize their own space, whether it was partitions or other features that were not previously in the space, landlords who want not to be left with empty spaces, will have to come to welcoming customers, finding with them solutions to share the development costs, “says Irina Petrescu from ESOP.
by Maria Neda 
