[morganvachon]

"the leasing company actually has limited leverage"

This can be true even at the SMB level. My employer sees only a couple of million in revenue yearly, we lease our warehouse/office space and we have more or less free reign to make any non-structural changes. If we decide to clear out a corner of the warehouse to put in more office space, we can (and we have). We just have to pay for the materials and labor. We've actually had our lease renewed on better terms over the years for being good tenants.

[IgorPartola]

The ability to modify stuff structurally (which isn’t really structurally but rather just the non-load bearing walls) is pretty standard in commercial leasing. Your employer isn’t getting anything special.

[jjoonathan]

Yes, because even a SMB has a lot of leverage compared to, say, a residential leasee. I believe that was the point.

[dx034]

It's more the duration of the lease. If you'd rent a house on a fixed contract for 10 years, landlords would also allow changes under the condition that they're reversed at the end.

Interestingly that's exactly the case in Germany. Home ownership there is one of the lowest in the world so that tenants stay in one place for longer. It's normal for tenants to change apartments as they like during the tenancy. Landlords don't care as long as it's in a good state at the end of the tenancy.

[ozi]

More simply, commercial spaces usually come empty, and the tenant is required to handle "fit and finish."

[deelowe]

Not only that, but the tenant is responsible for all maintenance and repairs.

[icelancer]

This is absolutely not the case in my buildings for our SMB that is in the single digit millions in revenue. We can make changes to non-load bearing structures and we are not on the hook for maintenance or repairs on the building.

[deelowe]

Is it a shared building? For the type of building the op was talking about (e.g. single tenant industrial warehouse) it's typically the tenant who handles maintenance.

[ksec]

It sort of depends. In most places on earth trying to keep the property leased is the basic principle. But Chinese has a funny culture where they would rather have it empty then to lower its prices, and even for a long period of time.