WHAT WE DO
End-to-end advisory and execution for corporate tenants office, industrial, and retail across Canada and internationally.
From needs assessment and market search through negotiation, due diligence, lease execution, and post-transaction handoff.
New lease transactions require leverage, not just options.
Lease renewals start before you call your landlord.
The most complex transaction type, all coordinated by our project management team from brief to hand off.
When your footprint shrinks or shifts, we manage the full disposition process.
Multi-location tenants need coordinated execution with consistency. For complex logistic requirements, our supply chain consulting supports location strategy upstream.
The tenant who moves first, with the most options, wins.
STRATEGIC PERspective
A commercial lease governs your occupancy cost, capital allocation, and operational flexibility for the full term. But most organizations don’t treat it as a balance sheet decision.
Transactions get delegated too late and without the financial and operational inputs that would have changed the outcome. The lease gets signed. The terms hold for a decade.
The firms that get better outcomes engage at the strategy level before they engage the market and with enough time to build genuine alternatives that change what a landlord will offer.
That is the difference between a transaction and a decision. Our commercial real estate transaction management team gets you there.
No obligation. Start with a conversation about your requirements and timeline.
YOUR Questions Answered
For most corporate tenants, 18 to 24 months before expiry is the right window.
Starting earlier than that preserves the most negotiating leverage because you have time to run a genuine market search, develop competing alternatives, and approach your landlord from a position of strength rather than deadline pressure.
For larger footprints, multi-location portfolios, or built-out spaces that require significant fit-out time, 24 to 36 months is appropriate. The single most common and costly mistake in commercial lease negotiation is starting too late.
A tenant improvement allowance (TIA) is a landlord-funded contribution toward the cost of fitting out or renovating a commercial space.
It is typically expressed as a dollar amount per square foot and is one of the most negotiable elements of a commercial lease.
The size of the allowance you can achieve depends on market conditions, lease term length, your credit profile as a tenant, and how early you engage. Landlords competing for quality tenants in a softer market will offer more.
A well-structured TIA negotiation considers not just the dollar amount but the disbursement timeline, permitted uses, and ownership of improvements at lease end.
In Canada, almost every term is negotiable.
The most consequential points include: base rent and rent escalation caps, lease term and renewal options, tenant improvement allowance and rent-free periods, operating cost (TMI/CAM) caps and audit rights, sublease and assignment rights, early termination or break clauses, and personal guarantee scope and duration.
The landlord’s standard-form lease is a starting position, not a final document.
A tenant representative’s role is to identify every point of exposure and negotiate terms that reflect current market conditions and your business requirements.
A commercial sublease allows a tenant to rent out all or part of their leased space to a third party (the subtenant) while remaining liable to the landlord under the original head lease.
In Canada, most commercial leases require landlord consent to sublease — the key negotiation is ensuring that consent cannot be unreasonably withheld and that affiliated party transfers (such as a corporate reorganization or acquisition) are permitted without restriction. The original tenant retains liability for the full lease term unless a formal assignment with release is negotiated.
ENCOR manages the full sublease process: strategy, subtenant identification, negotiation, and documentation, while protecting your obligations under the head lease.
Net effective rent is the true economic cost of a lease when all financial incentives — rent-free periods, tenant improvement allowances, and stepped rent structures — are averaged across the full lease term.
It is the metric that allows an apples-to-apples comparison between different landlord proposals and is the standard used by sophisticated occupiers and their advisors to evaluate whether a deal is actually competitive.
A proposal with a lower face rent but no TIA and no free rent period may have a worse net effective position than a higher-rent offer with strong incentives.
ENCOR calculates net effective rent on every proposal before any recommendation is made.
For a straightforward single-site renewal or new lease, active negotiation typically takes 4 to 12 weeks from the point of proposal exchange. The full process, including market analysis, shortlisting, site tours, LOI negotiation, and lease review, generally runs 3 to 6 months.
Complex transactions involving purpose-built spaces, significant tenant improvements, multi-party approvals, or legal review of non-standard lease terms can extend this timeline.
This is why timeline management is a core part of what ENCOR does.
Technically, you can negotiate directly. The practical question is whether you should.
Landlords negotiate leases every day with professional leasing teams who know the market, the comparable transactions, and your alternatives better than most tenants.
A tenant representative levels that information gap by bringing current market data, comparable transaction benchmarks, and the credibility of a competitive process to the table.
Because tenant representation is compensated through landlord-paid commissions at transaction close, there is no direct cost to the tenant in most mandates. The cost of not engaging is paid in the terms you accept.