The tenant comes first, the purchase second: how to assess an office before buying
When buying an office, price is not the first thing to establish. The first thing is whose business moves in and what they pay out of — you are buying a stream of rent, not square feet.
When buying an office, price is not the first thing to establish. The first is whose business moves in here and what they will pay out of. You are acquiring a stream of rental payments; the price only determines what you pay for it.
How it is usually done, and why that is a mistake
The usual order is: negotiate terms, pay, wait for completion, take the keys — and only now start looking for a tenant. That is the step where the unpleasant part surfaces. There are fewer parking spaces than the business you want requires. The space has to be reconfigured for a specific occupier. And the rate built into your model is not confirmed by the market.
A tenant map for the property
The correct order is the reverse: understand who the tenant is, then buy. For that, a map is drawn before the transaction:
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- Occupier profile — specific kinds of business, not abstract "companies".
- What brings them here — which particular feature of the location they need.
- The rate — from signed leases nearby, not from the seller's forecast.
- Technical requirements — parking, fit-out, permitted licence type.
What that looks like in practice
Take offices of 100–300 m² near Jebel Ali, the JAFZA free zone, the port and Sheikh Zayed Road. The free zone brings together more than 11,000 companies, including over a hundred from the Fortune Global 500, and it is the largest business cluster for logistics, trade, industry and engineering.
Hence the profile of the likely tenant: logistics, import and export, trading, engineering firms, industrial services, marine and energy companies, audit and accounting. That is not an abstract list — for each of those profiles the requirements on area, parking and licence are known.
Pre-letting
Then pre-leasing starts — not after handover but 6 to 12 months before it, through a letter of intent or a preliminary lease. That is the main instrument for removing void risk, and it is also an argument at resale: a property with a signed tenant is worth more than an empty one.