What Should You Do When Your Lease is Expiring?

workwell, Jakarta

So you've been at your current office for the last month or couple months or even the last year. You've been working on your business, coming up with new ideas, and scaling your team to match your business growth. But now the time has come that your lease is about to expire. Should you look to renew or should you be exploring other options? 

There are plenty of factors to take into account when it comes to choosing where you're going to work for the foreseeable future, particularly if you're a high-growth startup. Maybe your 10 pax office space will be overcapacity in the next month. If you've been working at the same office for a couple of months it might also be tempting to extend your lease if you're comfortable there. However, this might not be the best option for you or your business. Let's face it, nothing great ever came out of working in your comfort zone.

Let's take a quick look at two factors you should think about before deciding what to do about your upcoming expiring lease. 

Team Dynamic Changes

People. The lifeblood of your company. For every decision you make you need to consider the impact it has on your employees as well as the internal workings of your team: are you relatively stable in your growth or do you expect your team to grow or shrink in the future?  Whatever the case may be, you need to make sure that your office space can scale alongside your business. You want to avoid scenarios where you have new employees or interns coming in and there's no free desk space for them to sit out. Likewise, if your team shrinks, whether you've implemented remote working options or people have moved on to new opportunities, you don't want to be stuck paying for unused desks. 

Business Goals Evolving

Before deciding to renew your lease or search for a new office think about where your business is headed. Similar to the points above, you need to examine how your office space is impacted by your business and how your business is impacted by your office space. Do you plan on reaching a new clientele in a new market? Do you plan on starting a new department within your company? If so you might want to think about a larger office space to accommodate new team members, or even expanding to renting multiple rooms so each department has their own space. 

If you're an e-commerce company that stores their products in the office you would need to consider whether you expect your inventory to significantly increase in the future, in other words, would you need more space to store your products? Likewise, if your business runs on the cloud you might not need extra space for storage. So whether you're renewing or looking for a new office, make sure that you're not spending valuable capital for unused space. 

This is just a brief overview of what you would need to consider when your lease is expiring. Of course, the different considerations will depend on your own needs. The important points to keep in mind are to start as early as possible, don't leave the decision on whether to renew your lease or find a new office to the last month of your current lease. Otherwise, you might be left with no options or something too expensive or far from your clients or employees. In other words, waiting to the last minute can cost you more than just added stress. 

If you are looking to rent a new office space, don't hesitate to reach out to us and one of our Space Experts will get back to you as soon as possible to answer any questions and to discuss your options.