APT was subletting half a floor from another travel company, Travel Weekly, when the landlord gave notice that the space was being taken back. APT had to vacate on a tight timeline, with no space of its own lined up and immediate pressure to find somewhere to go.
Once we began working with APT, a second requirement surfaced: APT didn't want to sublet again. They needed a self-contained space for 42 desks and a meeting room, and they needed to move fast.
How We Solved It
We weren't only searching for APT. Travel Weekly, the company APT had been subletting from, was also looking for new space and needed the exact same thing: 42 desks and meeting room access.
That overlap is where the search got interesting. A company searching the market alone has no visibility into who else is looking, let alone that its own former sublet partner has a matching brief. We had that visibility across both searches at once and used it.
Privacy was the other piece. APT handles a lot of client information as a travel company, and didn't want to share a floor with a business it didn't know. Travel Weekly wasn't a stranger: the two companies already knew each other from the previous sublet, and both operate in the same industry. We identified a building with a mirrored floor plan and no other companies on that floor, giving each business its own space while keeping them close enough to solve APT's privacy concern.
We also negotiated a 17% discount on the list price for APT, on top of finding the right building.
The result worked for both parties. APT got the desks and meeting room it needed, in a building it felt comfortable in, alongside a company it already trusted, and at a better price than the market was asking. Travel Weekly got a space that matched its own requirement too.
Why This Needed A Broker
None of this was available from a listings search. Matching two clients' briefs against each other, recognising that APT's real requirement was privacy and not just desk count, finding a building that solved for both companies at once, and negotiating a 17% reduction on the asking price: that's what a broker brings that a client searching alone can't access. Neither APT nor Travel Weekly could have found this outcome, or this price, on their own.
The Takeaway
A landlord taking back space forced APT's hand, but the outcome wasn't a like-for-like replacement. It was a better fit at a better price, found because we were working the whole market and could see a connection, and negotiate a deal that neither client could have managed alone.
That's why companies like APT use a broker on an office move: not just finding a space that fits the brief, but finding the one that fits everything you didn't think to ask for, at a price you wouldn't get on your own.
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