If there’s a truth I’ve learned working on projects across 25 countries last year, people are more alike than they are different.
And that matters, deeply, when your job is occupier solutions tenant. At its heart, this line of work (done right) isn’t about square footage, rent-free periods, or clawback clauses. It’s about people. Their aspirations. Their anxieties. The complex, often messy dance between ambition and survival.
I didn’t always know this. I thought I was in real estate. I thought my job was to find the right building, assisting the team in negotiating pole position, and move on. But over time, what hooked me wasn’t the buildings. It was the people inside them, and the human condition that unfolds every time a company decides to plant its flag in a new city, start afresh, to grow, or to pivot. Cities are stories, and across EMEA and APAC, you get a hell of a lot of stories.
There’s a certain poetry to watching a startup founder from Tel Aviv nervously scan a lease for their first overseas office in Berlin. Or seeing the weight in the shoulders of a CFO in Mumbai, who knows this one deal might determine whether they hit their global expansion target, or sadly potentially lose their job. From Sydney to Amsterdam, it’s the same melody in a different key. People betting on themselves. Taking a risk. Trying, failing, trying again.
Although I’m a small part of the process, I’m so proud to play my piece. As a tenant rep based in London, a city to me which is a wonderful junction of empire and culture, I’m a strange hybrid of fixer, therapist, translator, and chaser. Some would say hustler, but I can assure you its more chaser. The clients call because they want space. What they really want is certainty. Control. An edge. Sometimes they want hope.
They want someone who gets the game. Who understands that beneath every transaction is something more primal. The need to matter, to grow, to leave a mark. That’s what makes this job addictive. Not the deals. Not the commissions. The stories. The people.
One of the most beautiful things about working across EMEA and APAC is learning that no matter how different the languages, religions, or cuisines, business anxiety is universal. So is office politics, and unfortunately so is b******t. In most Asia region meetings, it’s all ritual and deference. In Europe, especially Milan, it’s espresso and chaos. In Dubai, power is quiet, but palpable. In Paris, someone is always five minutes late and unapologetic. And yet, the fundamentals never change. People are trying to grow their business without losing their soul. They’re trying to find space that reflects their brand, motivates their team, and keeps the finance department from having a coronary.
What I secretly enjoy though is the moment that cuts through the formality. A glance between a founder and their COO. A quiet sigh after a marathon call with legal. That’s the human condition slipping through the corporate armour, and when you see it, when you really see it, you understand what your job is.
You’re not just there to “get them a deal.” You’re there to carry them, for a little while, through the chaos of change.
In truth though this work can chew you up. I’m only at the start of my career and yet to travel much, however, the time zones and the waiting between when I finish work and our client or affiliate wakes up can be exhausting. There are days you question it and you forget where you are, or who you are, a bit like waking up after a very heavy night out. But then something small resets you. An impromptu meal with a client looking to establish a flex office in Nairobi of all places where you end up laughing about your shared obsession with something completely unrelated such as the Lions Tour in Australia about to come up. It’s moments like those that stitch your life back together. That remind you why you do this.
I’ve always thought about leaving London, but as my Spanish flatmate says, “London’s a drug, when you take it you feel down, but the moment it goes away you really miss it”. Not because it’s easy (it’s not, but that’s part of the fun) or that it’s expensive, its crowded, and sometimes heartbreakingly indifferent. But it’s honest in its contradictions. In London, you can be everywhere and nowhere all at once. You can disappear or reinvent yourself entirely. You’re just another face in the churn. And that anonymity, it can be a gift.
From here, I watch the world unfold with EMEA around me, APAC to the right (carefully avoiding the “stuck in the middle with you” lyric here).
Something I’ve spoken a lot about previously, and something I very much need to still work on, is the elevator pitch. In my eyes to represent a tenant is to represent a dream. Sometimes that dream is naïve. Sometimes it’s built on nothing but caffeine and arrogance. But sometimes, it’s the real thing, a spark of something meaningful in a cold, cynical world.
Tenant representation isn’t glamorous. We’re not the headline-makers. We’re not the moguls. We’re the people behind the people, guiding them through real estate. Real estate is just the backdrop, the stage, but those of us in tenant rep, we’re ones who set the stage so others can perform. It’s not glamorous. It’s not easy, but it’s real and it matters. Wherever you’re in Dubai, Dublin, Delhi, or downtown Singapore, you’re never really alone in those feelings. We’re all just trying to make something of ourselves. One lease at a time.
