Our Services
Lease Audit & Occupancy Cost Reduction
Many Chicago office tenants are overpaying right now and don’t know it. We find it, quantify it, and negotiate it away.
Tenant-Only Representation
Find the Overpayment. Then Negotiate It Down.
Tenant Advisors audits your lease and occupancy costs against both your lease language and today’s market — above-market rent, operating expense pass-throughs that don’t match the lease, escalations compounding on inflated bases — then negotiates the reduction. Tenant-only representation, no cost to you.
Where the Overpayment Hides
Base Rent vs. Market
Leases signed before the market softened are frequently 15–30% above what the same space commands today. With suburban vacancy above 24%, the gap between legacy rents and market rents is the widest we’ve tracked.
Operating Expense Pass-Throughs
Annual reconciliations routinely include charges the lease doesn’t permit: capital items passed as expenses, management fees above the cap, gross-up errors, expenses outside the base year definition.
Escalations and Base Years
Fixed escalations compounding on an inflated starting rent, or an unfavorable base year quietly inflating every year’s pass-through.
Space You Don't Use
Post-hybrid headcounts often occupy 20–40% less space than the lease carries — which is a restructuring opportunity, not just a sunk cost.
What We Do About It
1. Benchmark
A lease benchmark comparing your rent, escalations, and concessions against current deals in your submarket — the first thing we told one recent client was that they were overpaying by roughly $90,000 a year.
2. Audit the Pass-Throughs
Review of billed operating expenses relative to actuals and annual true-ups, with potential recovery of overcharges or credits due under your lease.
3. Find the Leverage in Your Own Lease
Termination options, contraction rights, renewal windows, and expiration timing all create negotiating moments — some tenants have more mid-term leverage than they realize.
4. Negotiate the Restructure
Blend-and-extend (a lower rate now for added term), rightsizing the footprint, resetting the base year, or securing concessions early — whichever the numbers support. If the answer is bigger than a restructure, it feeds a renewal vs. relocation analysis.
Mid-Lease Is Not Too Early
You don’t have to wait for expiration. Landlords facing high vacancy value term certainty, which means a tenant offering additional term mid-lease can trade it for a lower rate today. And if your lease contains a termination option, that option is leverage whether or not you’d use it — one client’s termination right produced an early renegotiation and immediate savings. Current submarket conditions are in our market guides; the negotiation approach is on our renewal page.
Common Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
A review of what you actually pay — base rent, escalations, and operating expense pass-throughs — against two benchmarks: what your lease permits, and what the current market supports. It identifies billing errors and refund claims, and quantifies how far above market your economics sit.
Often, yes. Landlords facing high vacancy value committed term, so offering additional years mid-lease can be traded for a lower rate now — a blend-and-extend. Termination options, contraction rights, and approaching renewal windows also create mid-term negotiating leverage.
Common enough that reconciliations deserve review every year. Typical issues include capital expenditures passed through as operating expenses, charges above negotiated caps, gross-up calculation errors, and expenses the lease’s exclusions don’t permit. Errors compound annually if left unchallenged.
It varies with how far your lease sits above market and what the audit finds. In our recent work, benchmarking alone has identified tenants overpaying by tens of thousands of dollars per year — one at roughly $90,000 annually — before any pass-through errors were counted.
Nothing to the tenant. Tenant Advisors is compensated by landlords through standard brokerage commissions on the transactions that follow, and we represent only tenants — never landlords — so the analysis serves your side alone.
Find Out What You Should Be Paying
Tell us your submarket, square footage, and lease expiration — we’ll show you how your current rent and terms compare with deals we’re negotiating right now. No obligation. 2,000+ leases negotiated since 2004, exclusively for tenants.
Prefer to talk? Call (847) 778-0296
Tenant Advisors, Inc. | 1515 E. Woodfield Road, Suite 116, Schaumburg, IL 60173 | tkoelzer@tenantadvisors.com | No cost to tenants.
When Does Your Lease Expire?
Most tenants start too late. Leverage is built 12–18 months before expiration. Talk with Tom Koelzer or Dave Ven Horst about your options — there’s no cost to tenants; the landlord pays our fee.