The first conversation with a developer about a pre-leasing assignment is rarely the right moment to say yes. Before you stake your reputation on an unbuilt building, put a prospect in front of renderings, or commit staff hours to a speculative campaign, you need to understand what the developer actually brings to the table — financially, operationally, and legally. The questions below are designed for experienced tenant-rep advisers and corporate real estate leads who want to conduct that vetting properly. Use them as a structured framework, not a casual checklist.
Question One: What Is the Current Capitalization of This Project, and Has Construction Financing Been Secured?
Capital structure is the first filter. A developer who cannot clearly describe their equity contribution, the loan-to-cost ratio, and the name of the construction lender is a developer who may not have a viable project. You need to know whether the building will actually get built before you invest any time in the assignment.
The distinction between "financing in process" and "financing closed" is material. A project with a signed commitment letter from a recognized construction lender sits in an entirely different risk category than one that is still seeking a capital partner. Ask for documentary evidence — a term sheet at minimum — and never accept a verbal assurance as a substitute.
If the developer hesitates on this question or deflects to their track record, note the evasion. Track record matters, but a strong pipeline of past projects does not guarantee this project is funded. Every new development stands on its own capital structure, and you are evaluating this specific transaction.
A useful follow-up is to ask what the equity waterfall looks like — specifically whether there is a preferred return to the LP that might create pressure to accept below-market tenants if lease-up velocity stalls. Understanding the capital stack protects you from being pushed toward a deal that serves the developer's financing covenant rather than your client's long-term occupancy economics.
Question Two: What Is the Target Delivery Date, and What Contingencies Could Delay It?
Delivery date risk in pre-leasing is asymmetric. Your client bears the operational disruption of a delayed occupancy while the developer's primary exposure is financial. Asking how the developer has modeled schedule risk, and what their contingency plan is if permitting, weather, or supply chain disruptions push delivery, tells you a great deal about the sophistication of their project management.
Ask specifically about the permitting status. A project that has already received its foundation permit sits in a meaningfully more advanced position than one that is still in design review. Entitlements, site work approvals, and utility connections can each become independent sources of delay, and an experienced developer should be able to walk you through each milestone and its current status without hesitation.
Ask what mechanism exists in the lease to protect your client from a delayed delivery. A guaranteed delivery date with tenant-favorable remedies — including a termination right after a defined outside date — is a standard commercial protection in a well-drafted lease. If the developer pushes back on including that language, you have learned something important about how they intend to negotiate the rest of the document.
Understand the tenant improvement timeline within the overall schedule. Shell delivery and TI-ready delivery are different events, and the gap between them can run sixty to ninety days on a large floor plate. Make sure your client's business-plan assumptions align with the developer's actual construction sequence, not just the headline delivery date in the term sheet.
Question Four: What Is the Current Pre-Leasing Pipeline, and What Anchor Tenants Are Already Committed?
A building's lease-up velocity affects your client's negotiating position. If the developer is already in advanced discussions with a large anchor tenant, the concession package available to a mid-size tenant may shrink considerably once that anchor signs and the developer's lender adjusts the stabilization forecast. Conversely, if the building is entirely unleased with no prospects in hand, your client carries the risk of being an early mover in a project that may take years to reach occupancy levels that support amenity activation.
Ask specifically whether any letters of intent have been signed, and if so, what percentage of the net rentable area they represent. A signed LOI is a meaningfully more reliable signal than a prospect in discussion, and a signed lease is in a different category still. You are entitled to ask this question, and a developer who refuses to share any information about their pipeline should be evaluated with that opacity in mind.
The anchor tenant question has operational implications beyond economics. If the building is being marketed as a life science campus and the anchor is a major pharma tenant, your client who operates a law firm may face shared-amenity assumptions — conference facilities, food and beverage, security protocols — that do not fit their workforce's expectations. The tenant mix shapes the building culture in ways that do not always show up in the lease document.
Question Five: What Are the Base Building Specifications, and How Do They Compare to Market Standard?
This question requires you to do homework before the meeting. Knowing your local market's standard specification for ceiling height, power density, mechanical redundancy, and raised-floor loading lets you evaluate the developer's offering against a concrete benchmark rather than accepting their characterization of it as "institutional quality." A building that meets a minimum program will lease differently than one that exceeds it.
Ask for the MEP specifications in writing. Power density per square foot, chilled water capacity, emergency generator coverage, and fiber pathway diversity are not marketing claims — they are engineering deliverables, and a serious developer will have a basis-of-design document that describes each system. If the developer cannot produce that document, or characterizes it as "still in progress" on a project close to breaking ground, you are missing information that your client will eventually need.
Ceiling height and column spacing matter in ways that vary by tenant type. A financial services tenant with a high density of trading desks cares about slab-to-slab height and the plenum above a raised floor. A creative agency cares about exposed structure and natural light penetration. Understanding which of your likely prospects will be most sensitive to which specifications lets you match the right tenants to the right building rather than selling specifications that do not fit the user.
Ask about sustainability certifications and energy performance targets. LEED, WELL, and BREEAM certifications have moved from differentiators to minimum requirements for a growing segment of corporate occupier tenants. If the developer has not committed to a certification path, some of your most creditworthy prospects will self-select out of the building before you reach a lease conversation.
Question Six: What Is the Commission Structure, and What Protections Exist if the Project Does Not Deliver?
The compensation conversation is one that advisers sometimes defer too long, and the cost of that deferral can be significant. Pre-leasing assignments carry a specific risk that stabilized-building assignments do not: the project may not be built, or may be built substantially later than projected, and your commission protection depends entirely on what is written in your engagement agreement with the developer.
Ask whether the commission is paid in stages — a portion at LOI, a portion at lease execution, and a portion at delivery — or whether it is structured as a single payment triggered by a specific milestone. Stage-based structures offer some protection against a project that signs leases but never delivers; a single delivery-triggered payment means your earned commission waits until a construction certificate is issued. Neither structure is inherently superior, but you need to know which one you are working with before you sign the engagement letter.
Ask explicitly what happens to your commission if the developer is acquired, the project is sold to a new ownership entity, or the capital structure is recapitalized with a new sponsor. These scenarios are not hypothetical in a market where development projects are frequently sold prior to stabilization. Your commission should travel with the project regardless of who owns it, and that protection needs to be in writing before you begin work.
Confirm whether your engagement covers only the initial lease transaction or extends to any expansion, renewal, or relocation rights that are negotiated as part of the original lease. A five-year lease with two five-year renewal options and an expansion right creates a long relationship between your client and this building, and the scope of your representation — and your compensation — should reflect that duration.
Question Seven: What Is the Ongoing Property Management Plan, and Who Will Operate the Building After Delivery?
Tenants sign leases with buildings, but they live inside management decisions for years. The developer who builds a project is not always the entity that manages it after certificate of occupancy, and the transition from construction to operations is where many of the promises made during pre-leasing either hold up or collapse. Understanding the post-delivery management plan before your client commits to a long-term lease is due diligence, not overcaution.
Ask whether the developer intends to retain the building or sell it. A developer whose business model is "build and sell" may hand the asset to a new owner before your client has completed their TI buildout, meaning every operational commitment the developer made during the lease negotiation is now an obligation of an entity that was not at the table and may not share the same service philosophy.
Ask specifically who the property management firm will be and whether they have experience with the building type. An institutional office building with a multi-tenant configuration requires a different management approach than a single-tenant headquarters campus or a mixed-use development with retail and residential components. A property manager without the relevant experience will create service failures that affect your client's day-to-day operations regardless of what the lease says about management standards.
The operating expense base year matters enormously in a new building. A first-year base in a new development is often artificially low because the building is not yet fully occupied and some operating systems are still under warranty coverage. Asking the developer how they will set the expense base year, and whether they are willing to cap expense escalations in the early years of the lease, is a negotiation that belongs in the pre-leasing conversation, not at the lease drafting stage.
Question Eight: What Documentation Can You Provide Today, and What Is the Timeline for the Full Lease Form?
This is where you separate developers who are ready to transact from those who are still assembling the pieces. A developer who can hand you a draft lease form, a site plan with current permit status, a preliminary construction schedule with milestone dates, and a base building specification document is a developer who has done the pre-work to support a serious leasing campaign. One who promises to send documents "in a few weeks" is asking you to begin marketing a project on faith.
The keyword phrase "8 Questions to Ask a Developer Before Accepting a Pre-Leasing Assignment" reflects the entire premise of this framework: you are conducting an interview, not receiving a pitch. The developer needs to earn your commitment just as you earn your client's trust, and documentation is the currency of that credibility.
Ask for the form of lease the developer intends to use. Many developers use a proprietary form that is heavily weighted in their favor. Knowing the form before you engage lets you flag provisions — HVAC exclusivity clauses, holdover rent multipliers, co-tenancy carve-outs — that will create friction with sophisticated tenant prospects. If the lease form is not yet drafted, ask when it will be available and make your acceptance of the assignment conditional on review.
Confirm what the developer expects from you in terms of reporting, prospect qualification criteria, and tour protocols. A pre-leasing engagement that lacks clear expectations on both sides frequently deteriorates into miscommunication about whether a prospect is "real" enough to warrant a meeting with the developer's team. Setting those protocols in writing at the outset protects the relationship and keeps the leasing campaign efficient.
Organizing Your Vetting Process Before the Developer Meeting
Arriving at this meeting with a structured approach signals to the developer that you are a professional who will run an equally disciplined leasing campaign on their behalf. Prepare a written summary of each question with the evidence you expect to receive in response, so you can evaluate the developer's answers against a consistent standard rather than making a judgment call in the moment.
Consider using a scoring matrix that rates each answer across dimensions like documentation completeness, management team experience, financial structure clarity, and commission protection. A matrix forces you to assess the full picture rather than letting a strong answer on one question — say, an impressive track record — compensate for a weak answer on another, such as an uncommitted capital structure.
The pre-leasing vetting process also creates the foundation for your client intake. If you accept the assignment, you already know the building's strengths, limitations, and risks, and you can represent it honestly to prospects rather than discovering issues during due diligence that the prospect's counsel uncovers first. Advisers who know their product — including its problems — close more transactions than those who learn alongside their clients.
Evaluating the Economics Before You Accept
The financial modeling step should happen before you sign anything. Take the developer's proposed rental rate and concession package and calculate the effective rent — the net rent per square foot after abatements, TI allowances, and free rent periods are amortized over the lease term. Compare that number to stabilized alternatives your target tenants are already considering.
If the effective rent is at or above the market's stabilized comparable on a risk-adjusted basis, you need a compelling reason to bring a client into a pre-leasing conversation — typically superior location, a genuinely differentiated specification, or a concession structure that cannot be replicated in an existing building.
The lease NPV calculation matters here. For tenants evaluating lease economics, the present value of the rent obligation — discounted at the tenant's cost of capital — tells a more complete story than headline rent.
When to Decline the Assignment
Not every pre-leasing opportunity is worth accepting. If the developer cannot answer three or more of the above questions with documentary evidence, if the commission structure lacks adequate delivery protection, or if the building program does not match the demand profile you observe in your market, declining the assignment is the professional outcome — not a lost opportunity.
Your reputation as an adviser depends on the quality of the transactions you complete, not the number of projects you agree to represent. A pre-leasing assignment that results in a failed project, an indefinitely delayed delivery, or a client placed in a building that does not meet their operational needs will cost more in relationship capital than the commission ever recovered.
Documenting the Assignment Terms Before Work Begins
If you do accept the assignment, document everything. The engagement letter should reference the specific answers the developer provided to each of the above questions — or note that documentation is pending — so there is a clear record of what you understood to be true when you accepted the work.
Include a clause that allows you to terminate the engagement without commission forfeiture if the developer fails to deliver documentation within an agreed window, or if the construction financing closes on terms materially different from those represented in your initial conversation. This is not adversarial — it is standard commercial practice that any experienced developer will respect.
Keep a running project file from the first conversation.
Effective pre-leasing practice treats the developer engagement as the first leg of a transaction that will close only if the building, the capital, the tenant, and the economics all align. The questions above are designed to tell you whether that alignment is achievable before you commit your firm's resources to finding out the hard way.
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