What renewal concessions can I realistically get on a Denver office lease in 2026?
On a straight renewal, you keep most of the free rent and lose most of the build-out money. That's held across 25 years of tenant work, and it's exactly what I'm seeing in Denver right now. New leases in this market are landing around four to five months of free rent and $35 to $45 a foot in tenant improvements (~5-year term), with the biggest packages in the best buildings. A renewal starts below that, and the tenant-improvement allowance is the first thing to go, because you are already in the space and not building anything. The way to pull real concessions back into a renewal is to make a move credible before you ask.
Most renewal talks open on rate. The number that decides how much you actually get is a different one: how credible your alternative is.
If your landlord's renewal offer looks generous before you have asked for anything, read it carefully. Sometimes it is a landlord competing to keep you. Sometimes it is a landlord who cannot afford to lose the occupancy and is hoping you re-sign before you shop.
Why a renewal starts below the concessions you see advertised
The concession numbers that make headlines come from new leases. A landlord filling empty space is buying occupancy in a soft market, so they spend to win a tenant who has the whole market to choose from. Denver gives that tenant real room: office vacancy here runs above the national average, and downtown sits near 39 percent (CBRE, Q2 2026) against roughly 20 percent nationally (Cushman & Wakefield).
A renewal is a different transaction. You are already in the building. You have furniture, cabling, an address on your website, and a move nobody on your team wants to run. The landlord knows all of it, and it lowers what they have to spend to keep you. Their opening offer prices in your inertia. That does not mean the concessions are gone. It means you have to manufacture the one thing a renewal lacks by default: a real reason for the landlord to compete.
What Denver landlords are actually giving
Here is where the market sits in 2026, from the deals I run and the broader data behind them.
| Denver office, new leases (2026) | Free rent | TI allowance | Typical term |
|---|---|---|---|
| Class A (trophy / 4-5 Star) | ~4 to 5 months | ~$40 to $45/SF | ~5 years |
| Class B | ~4 to 5 months | ~$30 to $35/SF | ~5 years or less |
Two things matter here. First, the money is real: four to five months free and $40-plus a foot of TI on a Class A deal is landlord capital that lands directly in your occupancy cost. On 15,000 square feet, four months free at $32 is roughly $160,000, and $40 a foot of TI is about $600,000 in build-out the landlord funds rather than you. Second, the class gap shows up in the TI, not the free rent. The better-capitalized Class A landlord funds the bigger build-out; commodity Class B competes more on rate than on construction dollars. Nationally, office TI packages now run roughly 75 percent above pre-pandemic levels as landlords compete for tenants, with the richest packages concentrated in Class A (Newmark, Q1 2026). Free rent, by contrast, runs comparable across the two classes.
Read the term alongside the concessions, because they move together. A landlord spreads free rent and TI across the lease, so a shorter term means fewer months free and, above all, less build-out money. And terms are getting shorter: through early 2026, trophy and Class A office lease lengths fell about 10 percent and Class B and C about 25 percent nationally, as occupiers trade duration for flexibility, even while the largest headquarters deals run longer (Avison Young, Q1 2026). Shorter commitments are part of the new normal, and they are one more reason a stay-in-place renewal, short by nature and building nothing, sees the TI go first.
The renewal picture, and why the TI is the tell
Renewals are quieter than new deals, and they behave differently. On a straight renewal where you stay in place, the free rent largely survives, but the TI is the first thing to go. I see it on nearly every renewal: a landlord who will fund a $40 build-out to win a new tenant offers little or nothing to a tenant who is already there and not constructing anything. Free rent costs the landlord nothing to build, so it travels into a renewal. The build-out allowance does not, because a renewal in place does not fund construction. Recent Denver comps line up with exactly that.
The exception proves the rule. When a renewal includes taking more space or reconfiguring, the TI comes back for the part you are actually building, back toward new-deal levels, because now you are constructing something. So the honest read for a straight renewal is this: budget for strong free rent, expect little to no TI unless you are reconfiguring or expanding, and treat any build-out dollars you win as the product of real leverage, not the going rate.
The lever that unlocks a renewal: a real alternative
The single move that changes a renewal offer is a competing proposal in your hand. Not a bluff. An actual term sheet from a building you would genuinely take.
When the landlord knows you have priced a move and the numbers work, the renewal stops being a formality and becomes a deal they can lose. That is when the free rent stretches, TI dollars appear that would not otherwise, and the rate softens. The relocate-or-renew math is worth running for its own sake, but it does double duty: it tells you whether moving is smart, and it gives you the leverage to make staying cheaper. The tenant who walks into a renewal with one live alternative negotiates from a completely different position than the tenant who walks in hoping.
This is also why the building's own vacancy matters to you. How much leverage the building's empty space gives you sets the ceiling on what the landlord will do to keep you. A landlord staring at three empty floors and a loan payment will find concessions a full building never would.
Free rent or TI: which to push harder for on a renewal
The two big concessions do different jobs, and a renewal shifts which one is even available. TI allowance versus free rent comes down to whether you are building anything. TI is money you do not spend, and it only counts if you actually need the construction. Free rent is money you do not pay, and it drops into your effective rate whether the space needs work or not.
On a straight renewal where you stay put in space that already works, free rent is not just the cleaner win, it is often the only one on the table. So push the abatement hard, and treat any TI you win as budget for a targeted refresh, not a full rebuild. If your renewal does involve reconfiguring or expanding, flip the priority and anchor on TI, because that is the one scenario where the build-out dollars come back.
One number to watch underneath both: net effective rent. Annual escalations built into the lease schedule pull your average rent up over the term and offset much of the free rent and TI, so a deal that looks rich on the first page can pencil close to its starting rent once you spread everything across the lease. The gap between face rent and net effective rent is where a renewal is quietly won or lost. Judge the deal on what you pay across the whole term, not the rate on the first line.
Start early, or you hand the leverage back
Concessions are a function of time as much as market. The tenant who starts a renewal conversation twelve to eighteen months out has room to price alternatives, run a real process, and let the landlord feel the risk of losing the space. The tenant who starts ninety days before expiration has none of that, and the landlord knows it. Late in the clock, a renewal stops being a negotiation and becomes a scramble, and scrambles do not attract four months of free rent.
The market backdrop is on your side for now, but not indefinitely. Denver office may have found its bottom and is shifting toward stabilization: office tenants took roughly 119,700 square feet more than they vacated in Q2, per Cushman & Wakefield the strongest quarterly net absorption since Q1 2022, alongside the strongest quarter of leasing in four years, sublease space burning off, and new construction near a multi-year low. The empty space that funds today's concessions is slowly being absorbed, and the modern alternatives you would use as leverage are thinning. There is still time. The window is open, but it is not permanent.
The honest counterweight
Two cautions, because a concession is only a win if the rest of the deal holds.
A rich concession package in a struggling building is not always a gift. If the free rent looks too good in an older, half-empty tower, ask why. A landlord under real financial pressure may be buying your signature to steady the building ahead of a sale or a refinance, and the improvements and services you are counting on may not materialize. The concession is only worth what the landlord can actually deliver over your term.
And chasing the last dollar of concession has a cost. Holding out for a deeper package can push you late in your own clock, right into the scramble that kills leverage. The disciplined play is to run a real alternative early, take the strong concession the competition produces, and sign, rather than wait for a floor the market is already lifting.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many months of free rent can I get on a Denver office lease renewal?
New Denver office deals in 2026 are running about four to five months of free rent, close to a month per year of term. On a renewal, the free rent generally holds, since it costs the landlord nothing to build. What drops on a renewal is the TI allowance. Negotiate off the new-lease benchmark plus a credible alternative, and treat any single quoted number as a starting point, not the ceiling.
Is tenant-improvement (TI) money available on a renewal, or only on new leases?
Mostly on new leases. New Class A deals in Denver are running around $40 to $45 a foot of TI and Class B around $30 to $35, but on a straight stay-in-place renewal the TI collapses toward zero, because the landlord is not funding construction on space you already occupy. The exception is a renewal that adds space or reconfigures: then the TI comes back for the part you are actually building. Staying put, expect to fight for free rent, not TI.
Why is my renewal offer worse than the deals I see advertised?
Because advertised concessions come from new leases, where the landlord is competing against the whole market to win a tenant with options. On a renewal you are already in the building, and the cost and disruption of moving work against you, so the landlord's opening offer prices in your inertia, and the TI allowance is usually the first thing to disappear. The fix is to create a genuine alternative so the renewal becomes a deal they can lose.
Do I actually have to be willing to move to get renewal concessions?
Effectively, yes. The leverage in a renewal comes from a credible alternative, not from asking harder. A real term sheet from a building you would genuinely take changes what the landlord will do to keep you, including whether any TI reappears. A bluff the landlord can see through does not, and experienced landlords can usually tell the difference.
When should I start my Denver office renewal to get the best concessions?
Twelve to eighteen months before expiration for a typical mid-size requirement, earlier for larger or more complex space. That runway lets you price alternatives and run a real process while the landlord still has time to feel the risk of losing you. Start ninety days out and you forfeit the leverage, because the landlord knows you are out of time to move.
The bottom line
Denver landlords are paying real concessions right now, but a renewal and a new lease are not the same deal. New deals are running four to five months of free rent and $35 to $45 a foot in TI. On a straight renewal, the free rent largely survives and the TI mostly vanishes, because you are not funding a build-out and you are not threatening to leave. The realistic renewal is not the advertised number and not nothing. It is what a credible alternative, priced early, forces the landlord to match. And early now has a clock on it: with Q2's positive net absorption suggesting the market may have found bottom, the concession environment you negotiate against next year is unlikely to be better than this one. Run the move math before you sit down, whether or not you intend to move, because the tenant with somewhere else to go is the one who renews on the best terms.
That competing-proposal read, what your renewal is actually worth once the landlord has to compete for it, is the analysis I run with every occupier before we talk rate. If you have a Denver renewal coming and you want to know what you can really get, I am happy to have an honest conversation and run the numbers with you.
If you're working through a Denver lease decision, whether that's a renewal, a relocation, or a footprint question your CFO is pushing on, I'll run the numbers with you. Schedule a conversation.
About Brian McCririe
Brian McCririe is Executive Managing Director of SVN | Denver Commercial and National Council Chair for Occupier Services across the SVN network. After 25 years representing tenants and investors across global markets, he now focuses on the Denver Metro area helping companies navigate leases, acquisitions, and the gap between what landlords offer and what occupiers deserve. He leads one of the metro's top tenant rep practices and writes about the deals, decisions, and market shifts that matter to corporate real estate leaders.
