Lag vacancy, effective rents and optimal lease term

Abstract

This paper analyses the choice of the optimal lease term of office property in relation to expected lag vacancy, periods of rent‐free and expected rental income growth. The optimal lease term is the one that minimizes the expected costs of contract negotiation from the perspective of landlords. Specifically, it presents an analysis of how to estimate effective rents based on the lease term, expected lag vacancy and rent‐free periods. This study shows that the optimal lease term tends to increase under the following conditions: when the expected rate of rental growth decreases, the discount rate increases, or the expected lag vacancy increases. A longer contract duration is less costly when future rentals are discounted at a higher rate. Altering the lease length will change the risks taken by the landlord. Thus, contract length can be used as a device for insuring vacancy risk. Moreover, we find that the optimal lease length is more sensitive to the lag vacancy when the discount rate is at a relatively high level.