How to tour space, and read what a building is actually telling you.

Most tenants treat the building tour as a viewing — the way you might walk through a house with a real estate agent. The truly experienced ones treat it as an interview. They are interviewing the building, the landlord, the leasing agent, the neighborhood, the elevator company and the maintenance program. They have decided in advance what they are listening for. By the time they leave the lobby, they have answers to questions the leasing brochure never raised — and they have collected the leverage that quietly shapes the deal that lands six weeks later.

This guide is for the tenant — or owner-occupier — who wants the same outcome. It applies whether you are leasing a 5,000-square-foot suite, taking down two floors in a Class A tower, evaluating a lab fit-out, or buying a building outright. The mechanics shift, but the discipline does not. Touring is the moment your strategy meets a physical place. Done well, the day pays for itself many times over. Done poorly, it produces consensus around the wrong building.

Section 01 · FramingWhy the tour is the most expensive 30 minutes in the process

By the time you walk into the lobby of a candidate building, a remarkable amount of decision-shaping has already happened — and almost none of it is rational. You and your colleagues will form first impressions in the time it takes to clear the security desk. Those impressions will harden into preferences during the elevator ride. By the time the leasing agent opens the suite door, you are already advocating for or against the space in your own head, and you have not yet looked at a single floor plan.

The cost of being unprepared on tour day is not measured in dollars — it is measured in the deals you talk yourself into and the ones you talk yourself out of. The strongest building on a market basis can lose a tour to the weakest if the second one has a better lobby, a more attentive leasing agent, and a route from the elevator to the suite that does not pass three vacancies.

The opposite is just as common. A building with serious operational issues — aging HVAC, deferred capital, a landlord without the appetite or means to fund tenant improvements — can win a tour because the suite is fully built and furnished. You see what is there. You do not see what is hiding. The right tour discipline gives you the tools to do both.

Section 02 · Before the tourThe day starts long before the lobby

Almost every productive tour day is set up by 48 hours of work that happens before anyone gets in a car. The version of the tour where the broker arrives with an itinerary and you "wing it" is the version where you walk away with vague impressions and a soft ranking nobody can defend in a leadership meeting.

The pre-tour calibration

Before any tour, alignment matters more than information. The people walking the building need a shared sense of what they are evaluating, which trade-offs are real, and what would count as a deal-breaker. Without that, every team member rates the space against their own private criteria, and the post-tour debrief becomes a survey of personal preferences.

Calibration is a fifteen-minute conversation, ideally the morning of the tour and ideally with everyone who is going. It covers three things. First, the brief — what we are solving for and what timeline. Second, the lenses — which audiences this building has to serve, from leadership to recruiting to operations. Third, the rules of engagement — what we will and will not say in front of the leasing agent, and who is leading questions.

What to request from the leasing agent in advance

A serious leasing agent will be glad to provide most of this before the tour. The ones who hedge or default to "we'll cover it on site" are telling you something about how they will service the deal afterward.

• Current floor plan and stacking plan — including which suites are vacant, which are subleased, and which are expiring in the next 24 months.
• The base building specifications — HVAC tonnage per square foot, electrical service, ceiling heights, structural live load, parking ratio.
• Operating expense history — three years of actuals plus the current budget. Year-over-year volatility is informative.
• Tenant roster — major tenants by floor. Tells you about the building's positioning and your future neighbors.
• The asking economics — face rent, escalations, expense pass-throughs, TI allowance, free rent. If the agent will not put it in writing in advance, prepare to ask it on tour.
• For built-out suites — what's included as-is: furniture, cabling, equipment, signage, AV. And critically: who owns each piece.

Who should attend

The first round should be the smallest possible group: the real estate lead, the tenant advisor, and at most one or two operational stakeholders. The temptation is to bring everyone — leadership, HR, IT, finance — and treat the tour as a consensus exercise. Resist it. Bringing five decision-makers on a first tour means five competing reactions and a ranking that becomes a negotiation. Bring a small group, narrow the field to two or three, and walk the finalists with the full team. That is the version of the process where the finalists actually compete on merit.

Section 03 · ItineraryBuilding the day — and why six to seven is the limit

The math of a tour day is more rigid than people assume. A typical building visit runs 45 to 60 minutes once you include the lobby walk, the building tour, the suite walk, the leasing agent's pitch, and the brief Q&A. Add 20 to 30 minutes between stops for driving, parking, and a 5-minute reset. That puts you at roughly 75 to 90 minutes per building, end-to-end, before lunch.

Six to seven buildings is the practical ceiling for a serious tour day. Beyond seven, two things happen. The buildings start to blur — your top three become indistinguishable by 6 PM, and the post-tour debrief deteriorates into "wait, was that the one with the courtyard?" The other thing that happens is more subtle: your judgment compresses. After seven walk-throughs, you are tired, and tired people grade more harshly on whatever they noticed first — usually the lobby. A great suite at the eighth building loses to a strong lobby at the third.

Sequencing the day

The order of the tour matters. There are two schools of thought, and both have merit depending on your situation.

One school says strongest candidate first — anchor the day to the building you think you'll prefer, then test your assumption against the others. The risk is that the rest of the day is downhill, and by the fifth tour you're rating buildings against a benchmark they cannot match.

The other school says strongest candidate last — let the day build toward a finalist, with fresh memory at the end and natural energy in the room. The risk is that you're tired by the time you walk the most important building.

My preference: cluster geographically, lead with a baseline building that is not your favorite (a sanity check), end with your top contender while there is still daylight, and never schedule a building you barely want to see at the end of the day. You will not see it fairly.

The day's mechanics

• Drive together when possible. The 20-minute drive between buildings is when the real conversation happens. Each person's first instinct surfaces in the car. Capture it.
• Build in a real lunch. 45 minutes minimum, in the neighborhood of one of your tour stops. You'll evaluate the lunch options as part of the building, which is a fair stand-in for what your employees will do every Tuesday.
• Block 60 to 90 minutes at the end of the day for debrief. Same room, same group, while everything is fresh. This is the single most underused hour in the entire leasing process.
• Never let a tour run long. If a leasing agent is overdelivering, that's a positive — but it cascades into the next stop. A polite hard stop protects the whole day.

Section 04 · LogisticsWhat to wear, what to bring

This sounds trivial. It is not.

Walking shoes are non-negotiable.

You will walk three to five miles over the course of a serious tour day, between buildings, through corridors, up stairs, across loading docks. Heels, dress shoes broken in for sit-down meetings, and any footwear you have ever described as "fine for short distances" will betray you by the third stop. Comfortable shoes are not casual — they are professional. The senior tenants I have toured with all wear good walking shoes, and they take it as a sign of seriousness when their advisor does the same.

What to carry

• A phone with a fully charged battery — for photos, notes, and capturing the exterior signage of every building you enter (so you can sort them later).
• A notebook and a real pen. Handwritten notes during a tour are remembered. Typed notes are not. The other reason: a leasing agent watching you type into your phone wonders if you're texting; a leasing agent watching you write knows you're listening.
• A tape measure or a laser measure. Column spacing, ceiling heights, slab-to-deck clearance, window mullion spacing — these matter more than any photo. A 25-foot laser measure is $40 and fits in a pocket.
• Layered clothing. Building HVAC will betray itself before the leasing agent will. Walking from a 78-degree corridor to a 64-degree conference room tells you the zoning is a mess.
• A tour folder. Printed itinerary, addresses, suite numbers, asking rents, square footage, current condition (vacant, sublet, built, shell). One sheet per building. You will use it.
• Water. Dry buildings are dry. You will be thirsty by stop three.
• Business cards. Leasing agents will give you theirs; you should give them yours. The leasing community in any submarket is small, and your name being known matters.

Section 05 · The Five LensesWalking every space through five sets of eyes

A space rarely scores the same way across every audience. The lobby that impresses leadership may oppress the candidate. The kitchen that delights employees may be invisible to a client. The conference room that finance loves may have no AV.

The discipline of the tour is to slip in and out of five lenses as you walk. You will notice things in each that you would not have noticed otherwise. The tension between the lenses is the most useful data the tour produces.

Score every building against all five before you leave it. The variance is the signal. A building that scores eight, eight, eight is a strong contender. A building that scores ten, six, ten, four, eight is exposing exactly where its risks live — and exactly where you will spend money to bring it up.

Section 06 · Fixed vs. ChangeableWhat's in play, what's locked in

Almost every tenant on a tour confuses what they are seeing with what they are buying. They look at a wall and react to its color. They look at a workstation and react to the brand of the chair. They walk into a suite that was built for a law firm in 2007 and decide it doesn't work for a software team in 2026. None of those reactions matter, because all of them are in the changeable column.

The discipline is to sort the building into two columns in your head as you walk. What's negotiable, and what's locked in. The negotiable column is a project budget. The locked-in column is a deal-breaker — or it isn't. The mistake is to spend your reactions on the wrong column.

If your reaction to a building is “the carpet is wrong” — that is a $30,000 problem, not a building problem. If your reaction is “the column grid is wrong” — that is a building problem, and no amount of money fixes it.

Section 07 · Reading the buildingTells, red flags and small details

A building tells the truth about itself in a thousand small details. Most of them are not in the marketing brochure. None of them are in the floor plan. You catch them by walking slowly, paying attention to corridors and back-of-house spaces, and treating every transition — lobby to elevator, elevator to floor, floor to suite — as an information event.

The lobby

The lobby is the landlord's storefront. A well-cared-for lobby suggests an owner who is investing. A neglected lobby — burned-out bulbs, scuffed floors, a security desk where no one looks up — suggests an owner who is harvesting cash flow rather than reinvesting in the asset. Walk in cold, before the leasing agent meets you, and watch how the building treats a stranger.

The elevators

Elevators are the most informative system in any office tower. They tell you about the age of the building's mechanicals, how much capital the landlord has put into modernization, and what your employees will experience every morning. Look for: cab condition (carpet, lighting, button finishes), wait times during your visit, whether destination dispatch is installed, the smoothness of the ride, whether the doors open all the way every time, the date on the inspection certificate. A landlord that has modernized elevators in the last decade is a landlord investing in the asset. A landlord whose elevators feel original to 1985 is telling you where they are not spending.

Ceiling tiles and water

Look up. Often. Stained ceiling tiles are the single most informative red flag on any tour. A stain is the building telling you it has had a roof leak, a plumbing leak, an HVAC condensation problem, or some combination. One stained tile is a fluke. Three or more on a route through common areas is a pattern, and a pattern is a deferred-maintenance signal. The same applies to suite ceilings — when a leasing agent is showing you a built-out space and there are stained tiles overhead, you know the work that has been done to make the space tour-ready did not include addressing the leak.

The bathrooms

Public bathrooms are the most honest space in any building. They reveal what the landlord prioritizes when no one is watching. Look at fixture condition, cleanliness, ADA compliance, lighting, whether the soap and paper dispensers are stocked. A landlord who maintains the public bathrooms well maintains the rest of the building well. A landlord who does not, does not.

The route to the suite

Pay attention to what you walk past. If the route from the elevator to your candidate suite includes three vacant suites with broker signs on the doors, the building is telling you something about its absorption. If you pass another tenant moving out — boxes in the corridor, movers in the freight elevator — the same. A healthy floor has occupied doors with company signage, not landlord signage.

Active construction

Construction in a building is a two-sided signal. Positive: capital is being deployed, the asset is being improved, and you are arriving at a building with momentum. Negative: your employees may walk through dust and noise for the first six months, your move-in may be delayed by trade conflicts, and the new tenant you are about to be neighbors with may not be the one you expected. Always ask what is being built and for whom — and how it affects your delivery timing.

The mechanical room

A surprisingly small number of tenants ever ask to see the mechanical room or the rooftop. The leasing agents who let you in are the ones with nothing to hide. A clean, organized, recently labeled mechanical room with current logs by the boiler tells you the building is run by a competent property management team. A cluttered room with daisy-chained extension cords and equipment from three decades ago tells you the operational quality of the building you are about to occupy.

Other tells worth watching for

• Lobby tenant directory. Who's listed, who's recently removed, who's recently added. A directory full of recent additions is a building absorbing tenants. A directory with empty slots is a building losing them.
• Cleanliness of utility corridors. The corridors tenants never see are the truest signal of how the building is operated.
• Loading dock and freight elevator. If these look like the front of house, the building is run well. If they look like an afterthought, your move-in will be one too.
• Cracked tiles or settled floors. Cosmetic issues that telegraph structural ones. A single cracked tile is meaningless. A pattern is a slab issue.
• Stairwells. Walk one floor. If the stairwell is clean, lit, and accessible, you have a well-managed property. If it smells like a parking garage, it is one.
• Window seals. Run a hand near the perimeter on a hot or cold day. Air infiltration tells you about glazing age and energy cost.
• Fire and life safety signage. Current, posted, legible — or yellowing and from another decade?

Section 08 · Reading the peopleThe leasing agent, the landlord, the broker community

The building itself is half the tour. The other half is the people running it. By the time you walk out of the lobby, you should have a working theory on three questions: Did the leasing agent prepare? Is the landlord engaged in the asset? And is this an owner who wants me as a tenant — or who will simply tolerate me?

Did the leasing agent prepare?

The most informative two minutes on any tour are the first two. A prepared leasing agent knows your business, has a current floor plan on hand, has the building's stacking plan ready, can quote the asking economics from memory, and walks you to the elevator with a route in mind. An unprepared leasing agent reaches for printouts, defers most questions to the property manager, can't quote the operating expense base year, and "isn't sure" whether the suite next door is available. The difference matters not just on the day — it tells you what your experience will be after you sign.

Is the landlord engaged?

The signals are subtle but consistent. A landlord with a property manager who stops to greet you on the tour. A landlord whose engineer is on-site and visible. A landlord who has spec'd two or three speculative suites — meaning they have invested ahead of demand. A landlord who is doing a lobby renovation, an elevator modernization, or an amenity build-out. These are all signs of an owner who is investing in the asset.

The opposite signals are just as clear. An absentee owner whose name no one says out loud. A property manager based 600 miles away. No spec suites, no current capital projects, no recent investment. A landlord who is harvesting cash flow on the way to a sale will not be the partner you want when your TI gets value-engineered down to nothing.

How hungry are they?

The leasing agent will rarely say it directly. The building will. Vacancy on the floors you toured. Brokers' signs in suite windows. The amount of free rent the agent volunteers — not the amount you have to ask for. Whether the spec suite has been sitting for six months or six weeks. Whether the landlord has financed deals recently in the building, and at what TI per square foot.

The question I usually ask the leasing agent out loud, somewhere between the building tour and the suite walk: “If we moved quickly, where could the landlord realistically be?” A hungry landlord answers that question with concrete numbers. A landlord who isn't hungry — or whose financial picture won't support the deal — deflects.

Can they cover TIs?

This is the question that decides more deals than rent. A landlord with the appetite and the capital to fund a meaningful TI package is a partner. A landlord who can't — usually because the asset is leveraged, refinancing is upcoming, or operating cash flow is thin — will end up in a conversation about amortization, landlord work versus tenant work, and a TI number that doesn't actually deliver the space you toured.

It is acceptable, even expected, to ask the leasing agent directly: “What's the TI package the landlord can support?” The number you get is data. The way it is delivered — confidently, hedged, with a stipulation about lender approval — is more data. A landlord under a CMBS loan with TI reserves drawn down will give you a different answer than a landlord with an open construction line.

Do they have an architect? A contractor? A track record?

If you are signing a deal with material TI, the landlord's design and construction team becomes your design and construction team. Ask. “Who is the building's architect of record? Who is the GC the landlord uses?” A landlord with an established team — an architect who knows the building inside out, a contractor who has completed dozens of tenant build-outs in the property — delivers space on schedule and on budget. A landlord assembling a team for the first time will deliver neither.

Ask specifically: How many tenant projects has this architect completed in the building? In the last twelve months? How many has the GC done? What was the average delta between estimated and actual cost on the last three? These are the questions that surface real risk.

Section 09 · The neighborhoodLooking past the four walls

The building is the office, but the neighborhood is the amenity package — and the amenity package writes the return-to-office story. Recruiting, retention, and Tuesday attendance all live outside the suite. Walk a five-minute radius in your head as you stand at the front door.

• Coffee and lunch. Quick walkable options, not just one overpriced lobby café. Three good options is the threshold.
• Transit and commute. Rail or bus access, drive times from where your team actually lives. Pull up Google Maps with morning traffic projected.
• Parking experience. Ratio, visitor flow, garage condition, EV charging.
• Fitness and wellness. On-site gym, nearby studios, walking paths, daylight at lunch.
• Hotels and client venues. Where visiting clients or candidates would stay and meet.
• After hours. Does the area stay alive at 6 PM, or empty out the moment offices close? An after-hours dead zone is a recruiting problem.
• Safety and sense of place. Well-lit, active sidewalks, a professional context.
• Errands. Banks, dry cleaning, pharmacy, daycare, grocery within reach. These tip the daily attendance equation more than people admit.

Section 10 · QuestionsWorth asking out loud

Half of these you will have answered in advance. The other half you ask while you're standing in the space — because the answer changes when the leasing agent has to give it in front of you, in real time, with the property manager nearby. Ask in three buckets.

Of the space

• What's included as-is — furniture, cabling, equipment — and who owns it?
• What will the landlord clean, repair or refresh before occupancy?
• Which walls, doors or glass fronts can move? Any structural or historic constraints?
• What's the IT and carrier situation — MPOE location, riser access, carrier diversity, generator backup?
• Parking ratio, visitor parking process, and after-hours building access procedure?
• For built-out suites: which HVAC zones serve the suite, and what's the after-hours surcharge?

Of the building

• What is the building's after-hours HVAC policy — and what does the surcharge actually run per hour?
• What is the security and access control system, and what are the operating hours, including weekends and holidays?
• What other suites are available today? Any expansion rights, contraction rights, or rights of first offer on adjacent space?
• What is the possession timing, and are there any pending capital projects on the property — lobby, elevators, mechanical, roof — that will affect occupancy?
• Known building issues — HVAC, plumbing, elevators, roof, ADA, life safety? When was each system last serviced or replaced?
• What is the building's occupancy rate today, six months ago, and 18 months ago? The trajectory matters more than the snapshot.
• Who are the major tenants? Anyone signed in the last twelve months? Anyone moved out?

Of the deal economics

• What is the asking rent — net, gross, or modified gross? What's the base year for operating expenses?
• What is the TI allowance the landlord can support today? How much can be amortized into the rent if needed?
• Free rent? Months and structure (consecutive, upfront, or back-loaded)?
• Annual escalations — fixed or CPI? Compound or simple?
• What are the current operating expenses per RSF, and where have they trended over the last three years?
• Real estate tax assessment, recent appeals, pending reassessments?
• Are there any concessions the landlord has given recently in this building that we should know about?

Section 11 · The most important questionWhy hasn't this space leased yet?

If there is one question a tenant should always ask, in every suite, on every tour, it is this. “Why hasn't this space leased yet?”

The answer is more informative than any spec sheet. A leasing agent who can answer crisply — “It came back to the market three months ago after a tenant's expansion plans changed” or “It's been on for six weeks; we're showing it to a few groups” — is telling you the market story. A leasing agent who can't answer, or who hedges, is telling you something else.

The follow-up questions are just as useful. How many groups have toured it? Any offers? What was the feedback from groups that walked away? The answers reveal what the market thinks of the space — and what the landlord has been unwilling to fix.

Space that has been on the market a long time is space the market has passed on. Sometimes the answer is reasonable — pricing held firm, a single use class wasn't ideal, an unusual floor plate. Sometimes the answer is structural — the space has a real problem nobody wants to name. Your job on tour is to find out which.

Section 12 · Built-out vs. shellHow the tour conversation shifts

The tour you give a built-out space and the tour you give a shell space are not the same tour. Each demands different attention and different questions.

If the space is already built out

When a suite is delivered with finishes, furniture, and systems in place, the temptation is to grade it on what you see. The work is to see what is behind it — and what it costs to bring up to a baseline you are proud to occupy.

• Furniture and workstations. “Included” can mean inherited, leased, or someone else's salvage. Confirm density, power and data at every workstation, height-adjust availability, ownership, and condition. A leasing agent who can't tell you who owns the chairs is offering you a problem dressed as a benefit.
• IT, AV, and cabling. Cat-6 in the walls means little if it is not terminated. Inspect the IT closet — its location, riser access, ventilation, generator backup. Check conference rooms: are AV racks live, displays mounted, mics in the ceiling?
• HVAC and controls. Tonnage on paper does not equal comfort in practice. Older zoning rarely matches a new layout. Ask about system type, age, last service date, the number of offices on each thermostat, after-hours schedule and surcharge.
• Lighting. LED is a question, not an assumption. Look for color temperature consistency, dimming and occupancy controls, emergency egress fixtures.
• Window treatments. The sun moves; the building does not. The simplest comfort upgrade tenants forget to ask for. Solar shades at every exposure, motorized vs. manual, west and south elevations specifically.
• Acoustics and wet areas. Demising walls to deck or only to ceiling tile? Sound masking installed and tuned? Phone booths sized for your team? Kitchen and pantry — appliances, refrigeration, sink line, seating?

If the space is shell — or you would start over

Raw shell forces the right conversation up front. The bones tell you what is possible, the delivery condition tells you what it will cost, and the schedule tells you when you actually move in. Stop grading the space and grade the building.

• Base building delivery. Cold dark shell, warm lit shell, or spec suite? The line item that changes everything that follows. Confirm floor flatness, primed walls, ceilings, HVAC ducted vs. stubbed at the riser, lighting installed or open to design.
• Floor plate and structure. Column grid, depth to glass, core location. Slab condition — flatness, cracking, ability to score or saw-cut. Live load rating. Slab-to-deck clearance for plenum routing. Post-tension constraints on demolition.
• HVAC infrastructure. System type, tonnage per square foot, VAV box count for your layout, outside air capacity for high-occupancy zones, DDC integration scope, future capacity for growth.
• Electrical, data, and risers. Service size at the panel — capacity for future tech load growth. Riser tap availability and conduit pathways. Generator backup or UPS requirements. IDF room count and sizing. EV charging in the deck.
• Glazing, blinds, and lighting. Low-e glass, operable windows, solar shades in TI or tenant scope, LED throughout, lighting controls protocol, daylight modeling at the perimeter.
• Plumbing, life safety, and code. Sanitary and vent stack reach to kitchen and wellness. Sprinkler density, alarm tie-in. Occupancy classification triggers. ADA path of travel. Hazardous material survey.

Section 13 · PurchaseIf you're buying, not leasing

A tour preceding a purchase is a different exercise than a tour preceding a lease. You are no longer evaluating a building you will occupy for five or ten years — you are evaluating one you may own for thirty. The diligence layer expands materially, and the tour should reflect that.

What changes on tour day:

• Roof. Walk it. Age, last replacement, warranty status, current condition, any standing water, ponding, blistering. Roofs are the single largest near-term capex item on most buildings.
• Mechanical systems lifecycle. You are inheriting the HVAC, the boilers, the chillers, the cooling towers, the elevators. Ask for the original install dates, last major service, manufacturer life expectancy, and the replacement schedule the seller has in their head but may not have shared.
• Structural and façade. Walk the exterior. Look for cracks in masonry, sealant failure, water staining on facades, settled sidewalks, anything that suggests structural or envelope issues. Plan to engage a structural and MEP consultant before you go hard.
• Capex commitments — pending and deferred. Ask for the seller's three-year capital plan. Ask what's pending. Ask what was deferred. Pending is the work that will hit you in year one. Deferred is the work the seller chose not to do, and which now becomes yours.
• Environmental. Phase I, Phase II if any prior contamination, on-site underground tanks, active or abandoned wells. Hazardous material — asbestos, lead, mold — surveys.
• Title and zoning. Title commitment with exception documents. Easements, covenants, restrictions. Zoning compliance, permitted uses, conditional uses. Watershed and flood plain classifications.

If the building has existing tenants, the tour also becomes a tenant interview exercise. Walk the building looking for who's there, who's recently moved out, who's on month-to-month, who's expiring inside your hold period. Ask the seller for the rent roll, the leases, the lease abstracts, the security deposit schedule, the tenant aging report. The tour is when you start to test what the rent roll claims against what you see.

You also start the financial diligence on day one. Operating statements — three years of historicals, year-to-date, and budget. Real estate tax statements for the prior three years and the current year's assessment. CAM reconciliations. Utility bills. Service and maintenance contracts that you may or may not want to assume. Insurance certificates and loss runs.

For owner-occupiers buying a building for their own use, much of the leasing diligence still applies, but the lens shifts: you are not negotiating against a landlord, you are the landlord. Every issue you tour past becomes yours.

Section 14 · Post-tourThe debrief is where the day pays off

The most undervalued hour in the entire leasing process is the 60 to 90 minutes immediately after the last tour, in the same room, with the same group. The buildings are fresh, the impressions are vivid, the comparisons are sharp. Twenty-four hours later, most of it is gone.

Run the debrief in three rounds.

Round one — instinct

Each person gives a 90-second first-impression on each building. No discussion, no qualifications. Just the unfiltered reaction. Capture it. The instinctive responses, in aggregate across the team, tell you more about how the buildings landed than any structured scorecard will.

Round two — the framework

Walk each building through the five lenses. Score each. Discuss the variance. The building that scored five tens is a finalist. The building that scored well only on lobby is exposing its weakness. The building that scored well across the board but stumbled on one dimension is asking a question — is that one dimension a deal-breaker, or a project budget?

Round three — the cut

Force a ranking. Force a top three. Force an explicit reason for why each contender ranks where it does. The vague rankings — “we liked the second one” — are the ones that fall apart in front of leadership next week. The defensible rankings — “Building B because the floor plate accommodates our growth scenario with no demising work, plus the landlord can fund our TI in cash” — are the ones that survive.

Capture all of it. Photos with the address sign visible, sorted by building. Handwritten notes, transcribed. The debrief, summarized. This is the artifact that survives to the LOI stage.

Section 15 · The second tourSmaller circle, sharper purpose

The first tour narrows the field. The second tour qualifies the finalists. The two are different exercises and should be run differently.

The second tour usually has a test-fit or space-plan in hand for each finalist — a real layout, with your headcount, your room mix, your circulation. You are no longer evaluating the suite as it sits. You are evaluating the suite as it would actually be built for you.

The right team for the second tour is smaller and more functional. Operations and IT now matter more than executive sponsorship — they will validate or reject the test fit. Bring your project manager if you have one. Bring your IT lead. Walk the floor with the construction team's eye, not the executive's.

The right questions on the second tour are sharper:

• What will it actually take to deliver the test fit on this floor plate? What's the long-lead items list — switchgear, custom millwork, glass fronts, AV racks?
• What's the demo scope to get from existing to delivered? Full down-to-deck, or selective?
• Where are the long-lead constraints — permitting, landlord vendors required for life-safety, freight elevator hours, loading dock access?
• What sustainability or certification targets does the landlord support — LEED, WELL, Energy Star? At what level?
• Insurance, COIs, contractor lists — landlord pre-approval required, or open?
• How does this delivery schedule fit against our hard move target?

Section 16 · The tour checklistThe complete sequence, start to finish

One page. Use it as a working document on tour day.

Two weeks out

• Define the brief. What we're solving for, timeline, geographic constraints.
• Identify the audience. Who attends the first tour vs. the second. Keep the first round small.
• Build a long list with the tenant advisor — 12 to 18 buildings. Filter to a shortlist of 6 to 8.
• Request advance materials from each leasing agent: floor plans, stacking plans, base building specs, asking economics, operating expense history.
• Confirm the itinerary. Cluster geographically. 6 to 7 stops maximum. 30 minutes minimum between.

The morning of

• Calibrate the team. Fifteen minutes. The brief, the lenses, the rules of engagement.
• Pack the tour folder. Itinerary, addresses, suite numbers, asking rents, square footage. One sheet per building.
• Phone charged. Tape measure. Notebook. Walking shoes. Layered clothes.

At each building

• Photo of the address sign before you enter. Use it to sort your photos later.
• Walk the lobby cold. Form an impression before the leasing agent meets you.
• Note the elevator ride. Cab, wait, doors, ride quality, inspection date.
• Walk slowly. Look up. Watch corridors. Stained tiles, vacancy signs, finish quality.
• Walk the suite through all five lenses. Executive, employee, client, operations, finance.
• Sort what you see into fixed vs. changeable. Reactions belong in the fixed column only.
• Ask: why hasn't this space leased? Listen carefully.
• Ask: what's included, what's the landlord doing, what's the TI package?
• If buying: roof, mechanical lifecycle, pending capex, deferred capex, environmental, title.
• Capture instinct in the car on the way to the next stop. 60 seconds per person.

End of day

• Debrief in the same room, same group. 60 to 90 minutes minimum.
• Round one: instinct. 90 seconds per person, per building.
• Round two: the five lenses. Score each building. Discuss variance.
• Round three: force a ranking and a top three.
• Document follow-up questions by building. Send to leasing agents within 48 hours.

The week after

• Receive responses and any updated materials.
• Test fits requested on the top two or three finalists.
• Schedule the second tour with operations, IT, and project management.
• Begin LOI prep on the leading candidate while the second tour is being scheduled.

CloserThe tour is the moment your strategy meets the floor

Most of the leasing process is paper. The financial analysis is paper. The LOI is paper. The lease itself is paper. The tour is the only moment in the entire transaction when your strategy meets the actual floor you will occupy. It is the highest-information day in the deal, and almost the only day on which intuition and discipline are equally useful.

The discipline is in the preparation — calibrating the team, planning the day, choosing the lenses, building the questions. The intuition is in the walk — paying attention to the small details, watching how the leasing agent answers, reading the landlord through the building.

Done right, you walk away with a defensible top three, a clear sense of where the leverage sits in each building, and a deal that is half-negotiated before the LOI is drafted. Done poorly, you walk away with vague impressions and a ranking that will be argued for weeks.

If you only take one thing from this guide, take this: walk the building twice — once for what it shows you, once for what it is hiding. The second walk is where the real work happens, and where the experienced tenants and the best advisors earn their keep.