Real estate
A location or lease is a long tail of cost and flexibility. A tour is evidence of a feeling.
decision
Lease, buy, or build: score the exit before the lobby
A business property decision is a long commitment priced in a short meeting. Argumont compares leasing, buying, building, and staying put on the cost of occupancy over the whole term and on what it costs to get out.
Argumont is decision support, not an appraisal, brokerage, or investment recommendation.
The options on the Decision
Sign the lease, buy an existing building, buy land and build, renew where you are, or take less space for now. Staying put or waiting stays in view as a real option, because the cheapest move is sometimes the one the business does not make yet.
Each option gets a Champion that builds its strongest case from the evidence in the record.
Where the numbers come from
Rents, prices, rates, and fit-out costs come from your broker quotes, lease drafts, appraisals, and bids once you add them, and from sourced research. The Verdict uses only figures the record holds, and a figure without a source stays a claim.
Value and rent opinions belong to your appraiser and broker. The room weighs the decision those numbers inform: what the business is committing to, for how long, and what it costs to undo.
How the room argues it
Challenger attacks each path's weakest assumption. Wolf hunts the operating charges a quote leaves out and the rate reset at renewal. Red Teamer runs the cases that break property decisions: the business needs half the space in two years, rates rise two points before closing, or the build runs long.
What the Verdict says
Which path leads, which figures it rests on, and what would change it, such as a break clause at year five or a sale price that clears a set level. The Decision Passport keeps that reasoning for the board, the lender, or the next team that asks why.
Example criteria
Total occupancy cost
Rent or ownership cost over the full term, including taxes, insurance, operating charges, and fit-out.
Exit and unwind cost
Break fees, sublease prospects, resale time, and loss.
Flexibility
Room to grow or shrink, renewal and expansion rights, and how long the business is tied to the site.
Location fit
Access to the talent, customers, and logistics the business depends on.
Capital tied up
Cash locked in the property that the business could use elsewhere.
Concentration
How much of the business depends on one building or one market.
Common risks
Lease lock-in
A long term outlives the plan it was signed for.
Build overrun
Construction cost and timing move after the commitment is made.
Capital trap
Cash in a building is cash unavailable for the core business.
Example decision
Should we sign a 10-year lease on a 40,000 square foot warehouse or buy land and build our own? The room weighs ten years of occupancy cost against the capital a build ties up, and names the break terms or build cost that would flip the Verdict.
Related pages
Location selection
Location decisions are slow to reverse and easy to romanticize. Argumont compares sites, remote-first, and delay, with talent and logistics treated as evidence ...
Hold or sell
An owner deciding what to do with a building at 60 percent occupancy has at least three real options, and keeping things as they are is one of them. Argumont gi...
Operations
Operations choices look tidy in a memo and messy on a Monday. Argumont compares process changes against disruption, capacity, and whether the new path is staffe...
Reversible vs irreversible
A reversible choice can be a cheap experiment. An irreversible one should survive challenge before you spend the option to unwind.
Decision Library
These pages are public educational content. They are not your workspace decisions. Each one describes a kind of choice, the evidence it needs, and how to run it...
Bring Argumont a Decision worth challenging.
Structure the question, test the evidence and the assumptions, and preserve what your organization ultimately decides.
Compare lease and buy