Fit-out at ₹2,500-4,000+ per sq.ft, CAM at 25-40% of rent, deposits, parking and reinstatement: how to compute the true per-seat cost of a Chennai office.
A Chennai office decision priced on warm-shell rent alone misses more than half the cash flows. The recurring stack adds CAM, commonly a substantial fraction of rent, car-park charges per bay per month, electricity at commercial tariff plus DG backup rates, and property tax pass-throughs where the lease shifts them. The one-time stack adds the security deposit, typically several months' rent, stamp duty and registration on the lease, and the fit-out itself.
Fit-out is the heavyweight: a standard corporate interior in Chennai runs from roughly ₹2,500 per sq.ft for an efficient open plan to well beyond ₹4,000 for dense meeting-room and lab-heavy layouts, before furniture and IT. Amortised over a five-year term, fit-out alone can rival the rent line.
CAM definitions decide whether you are paying for what you use or subsidising the landlord's asset. The questions that matter: is CAM a fixed rate or actuals with audit rights; which heads are included, security, housekeeping, common-area power, lifts, façade, sinking fund; how does it escalate, and is the escalation capped; and are capital replacements, chillers, DGs, recoverable through CAM or the landlord's account.
On multi-tenant campuses, also verify the allocation basis, super built-up share versus actual occupancy, because a high vacancy building can load its CAM onto the tenants who stayed.
Market practice grants a fit-out rent-free period, and on competitive deals landlords contribute through extended rent-free, a warm-shell-plus specification, or amortised fit-out funding priced into rent. Each structure shifts cash flow and exit math differently: landlord-funded fit-out raises rent but cuts your capex and your write-off on early exit; tenant-funded keeps rent clean but concentrates risk in the lock-in.
The right structure follows your horizon: short-certainty occupiers should push fit-out cost toward the landlord; long-horizon occupiers usually do better owning the fit-out and the lower rent.
Most institutional leases oblige the tenant to reinstate the premises to bare or warm shell at exit. Priced honestly, that is a real liability, demolition, debris, making-good, often hundreds of rupees per sq.ft, landing exactly when the occupier is paying for its next fit-out elsewhere. Negotiate it at signing: cap the obligation, agree what stays, or convert it to a pre-agreed payment.
We model the full stack, recurring, one-time and exit, into a single true cost per seat per month for every option on a shortlist, because that is the number the decision deserves.
Roughly ₹2,500 to ₹4,000+ per sq.ft for corporate interiors depending on density and specification, before furniture and IT. Amortised over the lease term it often rivals the rent itself.
Typically common-area security, housekeeping, power, lifts and upkeep, but definitions vary by landlord. Verify the included heads, the escalation mechanism, audit rights and the allocation basis before comparing buildings.
The tenant's obligation to return the space to its original shell condition at exit. It is a genuine cost, often negotiable at signing, and should be priced into any leasing decision.