Prospecting playbook: output, not desks
Advisers recommend prioritising AI‑intensive operators and reframing space conversations around output instead of crude headcount metrics, because some firms are embedding AI tool spend into normal engineering budgets. Brokers are encouraged to build targeted occupier watchlists and landlord inventories that emphasise speed to occupancy, secure collaboration space and flexible expansion rights. (businessinsider.com, siliconangle.com)
Office brokers are starting to chase companies by how much work they can produce with artificial intelligence, not by how many desks they fill. Aaron Levie, the chief executive of Box, said on April 11 that he would rather see engineers “wasting” tokens than holding back experiments. (businessinsider.com) Tokens are the units that artificial intelligence models bill for when they read and generate text, and Levie said companies are still learning how much of that usage belongs in normal operating budgets. He said chief financial officers and chief information officers are scrambling to decide whether existing information technology and integration rules can handle agents hitting internal systems thousands of times an hour. (businessinsider.com) That budgeting shift changes how landlords and tenant representatives read office demand. If software teams can produce more with the same headcount, square-foot forecasts tied to hiring plans become less useful than signals about product velocity, security needs and how fast a company wants to open space. (businessinsider.com, nmrk.com) Newmark said on April 6 that artificial intelligence is already creating office demand in select technology hubs, especially the San Francisco Bay Area, even as wider adoption may let firms generate more output with fewer employees through 2030. The brokerage said that mix will intensify the “flight to quality” and shift value toward adaptable workplaces built for in-person collaboration. (nmrk.com) CBRE reported on January 20 that office utilization across its client base rose to 53% in 2026, up from 38% in 2024 and 35% in 2023. In the same research, 68% of respondents said collaboration with colleagues was the main reason employees come into the office. (cbre.com) That helps explain why brokers are being pushed toward buildings that can open quickly and support private team work, not just banks of assigned desks. Newmark said flexible, furnished and plug-and-play offices are gaining appeal as fit-out costs stay high and are projected to rise another 3% to 7% in 2026, depending on the market. (nmrk.com) The wider corporate backdrop is also shifting from pilots to scaled deployment. Deloitte said worker access to artificial intelligence rose 50% in 2025, two-thirds of organizations already report productivity and efficiency gains, and only one in five companies has a mature governance model for autonomous agents. (deloitte.com) Some executives are framing those systems as a new class of worker. In a guest column published April 11, SiliconANGLE said “digital employees” are already handling tasks such as inbox summaries, calendar checks and expense submissions, while citing an EY survey that found 84% of employees were eager to use agentic artificial intelligence and 56% worried about job security. (siliconangle.com) Real estate advisers do not have a settled formula for what that means for total office demand. CBRE said in September 2024 that the data was still emerging and that artificial intelligence could either reduce space needs through efficiency or increase them if new roles and businesses grow faster than old tasks disappear. (cbre.co.uk) For now, the practical change is simpler than the forecasts: ask what a team is producing, what systems it must protect and how quickly it may need more room. In a market where output can rise before payroll does, the old desk count is no longer the first number to watch. (businessinsider.com, cbre.com, nmrk.com)
