Look beyond the frame.....2024

During the COVID-19 period co-working space industry developed dramatically, and a company operating the co-working space brand headquartered in Singapore asked for our service.

The Company ‘J’ entered Korea in 2019 and have five branches in Seoul.

They wanted an agent which is tenacious and responsible for own tasks because reducing the cost when opening new branches is one of their critical factors for their business model. This branch would be the newest branch in 4 years after opening 5 branches in 2019 so that the client was rush to expand their market share.

The ‘J’ requested a large area of over 500 py and preferred a location in the center of a city, especially Myeong-dong area. They also requested the TI(Tenant Improvement) from the landlord.

The atmosphere of the office market in Seoul was very nice at the time so the conditions the ‘J’ required weren’t attractive to the landlords. Pineestate explained the market situation to the ‘J’ and proposed the idea converting a retail area to an office as an alternative. The retail area had many vacancies due to the COVID-19 so the gap between the landlords and the ‘J’ could be narrowed.

Pineestate proposed the ‘N’ mall located in Myeong-dong to the ‘J’. The ‘J’ responded positively to our idea and began to review it actively.

Many conflicts, however, began to arise during the discussions and the negotiations. At first, the terms and concepts during the interpretation of the conditions and terms were very different, and communication was sometimes limited cause of the cultural differences. Additionally, it took almost more time to discuss due to convert all the documents from English to Korean and opposite way as well.

The progress of the deal has slowed down, and it took 8 months since the deal had started. The landlord pushed us to make it progress continuously.

Pineestate decided to take extraordinary measures. Pineestate had set a deadline and noticed to both the ‘J’ and the landlord that if we all couldn’t meet the deadline, the deal would be broken.

Finally, we were able to successfully conclude the deal, and it have been taken around 10 months. Once the deal is completed, everything ends with happy, no matter how difficult the processes are.