Many business executives know how to negotiate.  Indeed, it’s a vital skillset essential to advancement in nearly all careers.  But not all negotiations are equal.  Negotiating leases on behalf of office tenants, for example, is a specialized undertaking.  As with all negotiations, successful tenant lease negotiations are highly correlated with understanding the motivations of the counterparty.  This means knowing everything about the landlord, including the equity and debt positions, the investment thesis, the leasing dynamic at the building (vacancy, lease rollover, etc.), the value of any recently completed comparable lease transactions in the building and in the market, and the overall market dynamic.  These factors are fundamental to assessing leverage.  Yet even when these basic elements are in place, the act of exercising leverage also requires special skills.