Delapidation

So I had the fairly unpleasant job of returning to our old offices prior to handing it back to the landlord at the end of it's lease. I opened up so that some of the staff could loot the remainder of the furniture.

In doing so I found out about a common but thoroughly nasty aspect of corporate leasing: delapidation.

Landlords lease property by square foot. The more space there is, the more rent they can command. They also make money when tenants want to alter the space to suit them - in legal and surveyors fees.

Tenants also like freedom to fit out their offices in whatever way they like.

And in every lease is a clause which allows all of this in the landlord's favour: that tenants pay to have the office put back to rights.

All of this makes good economic sence - everyone wins. Well the landlord does anyway.

What's nasty is that it's wasteful. Fair enough, our company has been in the offices for 7 years and plenty about it needs refitting. But it has useful office partitions with glass walls, cabling, an air conditioned server room, two kitchens with built in appliances fitted only 8 months ago etc etc.

Anyway, the deconstruction process was well underway and having had to break in to said office after we didn't have all the keys, we were faced with something which didn't even look like the place I've spent 4 years of my life. They'd ripped everything out and made a big pile of rubble in the middle of the floor taller than me.

It'll cost us £28k to have this done and I'm sure the end result will be a professional looking, very empty space.
But the next tennants will need a kitchen, offices and partitions, cabling. And they'll pay through the nose for that too.

Maybe it's weird that I feel personally attached to this old tank factory, but I just can't stand the waste of money and materials.

New era etc etc.