Office Relocation Timeline: When Should You Start Planning?
Depending on your circumstances, an office relocation can take months, and sometimes years, to plan for and execute. It’s one of the most common questions we get asked, and it’s also one of the most misunderstood. Many businesses assume they can start looking a few months before their lease runs out and still land in the right space on the right terms. In reality, the businesses that get the best outcomes, whether that’s a strong renewal deal or a smooth move to somewhere better suited to them, are usually the ones who started thinking about it far earlier than they expected to.
We’ve put together some handy milestones to prompt your thinking moving forward. A sensible timeline looks something like this.
Office Relocation Timeline: Key Milestones
24 to 18 months out: Understand your options
This is the stage where the real groundwork happens, even though very little of it is visible yet. The priority is working out whether staying put or moving on is the likely preference for your business. That means reviewing your break and expiry provisions alongside your legal team, along with reinstatement and dilapidations obligations, current headcount, and future space requirements.
It’s also worth quietly testing the market at this point. Understanding likely rents, incentives, and availability gives you a realistic sense of what’s out there and what it might cost, without committing to anything or tipping off your existing landlord that you’re weighing up your options. The insight gathered here shapes every decision that follows, so it’s worth taking seriously even though the actual move still feels a long way off.
18 to 12 months out: Make the key decisions
This is arguably the most important window in the entire process. It’s when a full market search happens in earnest, viewings of potential new buildings begin, and negotiations open up with both your existing landlord and prospective new ones.
Running these conversations in parallel matters more than it might seem. Ideally, you want genuine competitive tension between renewing your current lease and relocating elsewhere. Landlords are far more likely to offer favourable terms when they know you have credible alternatives, and you’re far better placed to judge whether staying makes sense once you know what moving would actually look like and cost. Treating this as a genuine decision, rather than a formality before renewing, is often what makes the difference between an average deal and a strong one.
12 to 9 months out: Get under offer
By this stage, the aim is to have your preferred building selected and commercial terms substantially agreed, or as we call it in the industry, “under offer.” This is a significant milestone, but it’s far from the finish line.
Alongside agreeing terms, this is when detailed fit-out budgeting and design work should begin, together with technical due diligence on the building itself. Understanding the true cost and feasibility of fitting out a space before you’re legally committed to it can save significant time, money, and stress further down the line.
9 to 6 months out: Work through the detail
This period covers legal negotiations, licences for alterations, fit-out design and procurement, and landlord approvals. It’s also, frankly, where transactions most often take longer than anticipated. Legal processes involve multiple parties, and landlord approvals in particular can move more slowly than businesses expect, especially if alterations to the building are involved.
Building in some contingency here is sensible. Few relocations run entirely to schedule at this stage, and having a buffer prevents a slipping legal timeline from turning into a last-minute scramble later on.
6 to 3 months out: Prepare for the move
With terms agreed and legals progressing, attention turns to the physical fit-out and practical move preparation. If you’re leaving an existing space, this is also the point to properly address reinstatement and dilapidations, rather than discovering the scale of that liability at the last minute. Dilapidations claims can be substantial, and leaving them unaddressed until the very end of a lease is one of the most common and avoidable causes of unexpected cost in the entire process.
0 months: Move day and beyond
At this point, the new office should be fully operational, and the old lease surrendered or expired cleanly, with all outstanding obligations settled. Reaching this stage smoothly is very much a reflection of the planning that went into everything before it.
So how long should you actually allow?
Timelines naturally vary depending on the size and complexity of the move. For a small, straightforward office, you can often get away with 6 to 12 months. For spaces of 20,000 square feet or more, we’d lean toward allowing 18 to 24 months. And for anything above 50,000 square feet, or a major headquarters relocation, 24 to 36 months isn’t excessive at all.
The common thread across all of these is simple: the earlier you start thinking about your options, the more control you have over the outcome. Leaving it late doesn’t just add pressure, it narrows your choices and weakens your negotiating position at exactly the point you need it most.
Planning an office move?
Whether your lease expires in six months or three years, starting early gives you more choice and a stronger negotiating position. Stoneway can help you assess staying versus moving, understand the market, negotiate the right terms and support you throughout the process.
Talk to the Stoneway team about planning your office relocation.
