How much space does your business need?
Skip the "200 SF per employee" myth — it overshoots or starves you. This builds your requirement up from real function: workstations, meetings, storage, and the circulation you actually pay rent on. Then it projects three years out so you don't sign for a space you outgrow in eighteen months.
Turn this into a real shortlist
Send me the number above and roughly where you need to be. I'll come back with what's actually available at that size and where the rate should land. No cost to you — on a lease the landlord pays the tenant representative out of the transaction.
Estimates use standard commercial space-planning ratios and are for planning only — not a substitute for an architect's test-fit or a broker's space program. Actual needs vary by layout, building efficiency, and use.
Why "200 square feet per employee" puts tenants in the wrong space
It is the first number anyone gives you and it is almost never the number you need. I have watched it fail in both directions. A ten-person insurance agency that needs private offices and a real conference room gets told 2,000 square feet and cannot make it work. A twenty-person sales floor that needs open desks and one huddle room gets told 4,000 and pays rent on a third of a suite nobody sits in.
The per-head rule collapses everything that actually drives a floor plan into one average: how many people need a door that closes, whether you run a shift pattern, how much inventory sits behind the counter, whether clients come to you. Two businesses with identical headcount routinely land 40% apart once you build the requirement up from function instead of down from an average.
That is what the calculator above does. It asks what the space has to do, then adds the circulation you pay for whether you use it or not. The output is a range, not a single figure, because a range is honest and a single figure is not.
What South Florida actually has at each size
Knowing your requirement is half the problem. The other half is knowing whether the market has it, and this is where most space searches go sideways. I keep a record of every commercial parcel with a building on it across Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach — 76,099 buildings as of August 2026. The size distribution surprises almost everyone.
61.8% of the tri-county commercial stock is under 5,000 square feet. This is a small-grained market. The median office building is 1,703 SF. Median industrial is 4,320 SF. Median retail is 3,858 SF.
| Type | Buildings | Median SF | Under 2,500 | 2,500–10k | 10k–25k | Over 25k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Industrial | 26,204 | 4,320 | 9,684 | 8,821 | 3,839 | 4,056 |
| Office | 17,728 | 1,703 | 10,787 | 3,889 | 1,362 | 1,702 |
| Retail | 16,033 | 3,858 | 5,896 | 6,476 | 2,280 | 1,399 |
Counted from county parcel records across Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, August 2026. Building area only; parcels with no structure are excluded.
Read the office row again, because it is the one that changes how you should search. If the calculator puts you at 12,000 square feet of office, you are shopping the top 17% of the office stock — roughly 3,064 buildings out of 17,728, spread across three counties. That is a real constraint and it should change your approach: you widen the geography, you look at buildings that can combine suites, and you start earlier, because there is no deep bench of alternatives to fall back on.
Industrial is easier at size. About 30% of industrial buildings clear 10,000 SF. Retail sits in between at roughly 23%. Under 5,000 square feet, in any of the three, you have genuine choice and real negotiating leverage — there is always another suite.
Rentable, usable, and the gap you pay rent on
The calculator returns rentable square feet, and that is deliberate. Rentable is what a lease is written against and what a landlord quotes, so it is the only number that lets you compare two buildings honestly.
Usable square footage is what sits inside your four walls. The difference between the two is the load factor — your share of corridors, lobbies, restrooms, and mechanical rooms. It typically runs 12–18% in a single-tenant building and 25–35% in a multi-tenant office tower with generous common areas.
This matters more than tenants expect. A 5,000 SF suite at a 15% load factor and a 5,000 SF suite at a 32% load factor give you roughly 4,350 and 3,790 usable feet. Same rentable number on the lease, same rent, about 560 feet of difference in what you can actually furnish. When you are comparing two quotes at the same rate per foot, ask for the load factor on each. If a landlord will not state it, that is information too.
I am a broker, not an architect. Before you sign anything, a test-fit from a space planner is the step that turns an estimate into a floor plan, and it is normally free when a landlord wants your tenancy.
Sizing for three years, not for today
The calculator projects forward because commercial leases are long and your business is not static. A five-year lease signed to today's headcount is a bet that you will not grow, and if you do grow you will be paying to break or sublease a space that no longer fits.
The opposite error is just as expensive. Renting 40% more than you need from day one so you can "grow into it" means paying rent on empty floor for three years. On a 6,000 SF office in Broward, carrying 2,000 unused feet is real money leaving the business every month for something nobody uses.
The structures that solve this are contractual, not spatial. A right of first refusal on the adjacent suite. An expansion option with a pre-agreed rate. A shorter initial term with a renewal option, so the decision comes back to you before the market does. Those are worth more than square footage you are not using, and they are negotiable if you raise them before you sign rather than after.
If the projection puts you meaningfully above where you are today, the useful next step is running the total cost both ways — the commercial lease cost calculator compares effective rent across different terms and concession packages so you can see what flexibility is actually costing you.
What changes by space type
Office
The private-office ratio drives everything. A firm where most people need a door — law, accounting, wealth management — programs very differently from an open sales floor at identical headcount. Conference space is the other swing factor: one 12-person boardroom is roughly 300 square feet you carry permanently for something used a few hours a week. Worth it for some practices, dead weight for others.
Industrial and warehouse
Square footage is the least interesting number in an industrial requirement. Clear height determines whether you can rack vertically and cut your footprint. Dock doors versus grade-level access determines whether your trucks work at all. Power determines whether your equipment runs. I have seen tenants sign the right square footage in a building that could not physically support the operation, and there is no fixing that after the fact. Check clear height, loading and power before you fall in love with a number.
Retail and restaurant
Frontage, visibility and parking count carry more weight than interior area. A restaurant's requirement is set by kitchen and back-of-house before a single seat is placed, and the buildout cost per foot runs far above office — which is why the buildout and TI question belongs in the conversation from the first tour, not after the letter of intent.
What the square-footage number leaves out
A requirement is not finished when you have a number. Two suites at the same rentable size and the same asking rate can land thousands of dollars apart per month once the rest of the deal is on the table, and tenants who shop on size and rate alone find that out at the wrong time.
Parking is the one that catches South Florida tenants hardest. Ratios here are quoted per thousand rentable square feet, and a 4-per-thousand building and a 2.5-per-thousand building are not the same product no matter what the floor plan says. If you have twenty-two people and eleven spaces, you have a staffing problem dressed up as a real estate decision. Ask for the ratio in writing, then ask whether the spaces are assigned, reserved, or charged separately.
Then there is the operating expense side. A gross quote and a triple-net quote at the same headline rate are not comparable — in a NNN structure you carry taxes, insurance and common-area maintenance on top, and in South Florida the insurance line has moved enough in recent years that a stale estimate is worse than none. Ask for the actual current-year figure per foot, not last year's budget. The occupancy cost calculator puts both structures on the same basis so the comparison is real.
Buildout is the third. Delivered condition ranges from a finished suite you can move into to a shell with a concrete floor and a stubbed-out bathroom, and the tenant improvement allowance a landlord offers rarely covers the second. That gap is usually the largest single number in a lease negotiation and almost never the one tenants ask about first.
Turning your number into a shortlist
Once you have a range, the search stops being about square footage and starts being about leverage. Here is the order I work in, and it is deliberate.
First, define the geography honestly — where your staff actually commute from and where your customers or trucks come from, not where you would like the address to be. Second, take the range from the calculator and set the search band wider on both sides, because a 5,800 SF suite and a 6,400 SF suite are both worth a look and rigid filters hide good options. Third, build a list long enough that no single landlord is essential. That last point does more for your rate than any negotiating tactic. A landlord who knows you have three live alternatives behind you gives concessions a landlord who knows you have one does not.
Then you tour, you shortlist, and you go out to multiple buildings simultaneously with a written request for proposal rather than negotiating one deal at a time. Sequential negotiation costs you months and hands the timing advantage to whoever you are talking to.
If you own the building you are sitting in rather than leasing it, the same question runs in reverse — what your current footprint is worth, and whether the space fits the business well enough to keep. That is a valuation question, and it is a different conversation from this one.
I represent tenants and buyers across Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach. If you want the number above turned into a real shortlist with real availability behind it, start a conversation and tell me what the space has to do. There is no cost to you on a lease — the landlord pays the tenant representative out of the transaction whether you bring one or not.
Frequently asked questions about commercial space requirements
How many square feet per employee do I actually need?
Between roughly 75 and 250 rentable square feet depending on how you work, which is a range wide enough to make the average useless. A dense open sales floor can run near the bottom. A professional firm where most staff have private offices runs near the top. Build from function — desks, offices, meeting rooms, storage, then circulation — rather than multiplying headcount by a number you read somewhere.
What is the difference between rentable and usable square feet?
Usable is the space inside your walls. Rentable adds your proportional share of corridors, lobbies, restrooms and mechanical areas, and it is the figure your lease and your rent are based on. The gap is the load factor, commonly 12–18% single-tenant and 25–35% multi-tenant. Always ask for the load factor when comparing two quotes at the same rate.
How much warehouse space do I need in South Florida?
Start with pallet positions and racking height rather than floor area, because clear height changes the answer dramatically — the same inventory in a 30-foot clear building may need half the footprint of a 14-foot one. Then confirm dock doors, truck court depth and power. For context, the median industrial building across the tri-county market is 4,320 square feet and about 30% of the stock exceeds 10,000.
Is it cheaper to lease more space than I need now?
Usually not. Paying rent on space nobody occupies is a certain cost, while growth is a forecast. The cheaper answer is contractual: an expansion option, a right of first refusal on the neighboring suite, or a shorter term with a renewal option. Those cost little to negotiate before signing and nothing to leave unused.
How far ahead should I start looking for commercial space?
Nine to twelve months before your current lease expires for a straightforward move, and longer above 10,000 square feet or anywhere the buildout is substantial. The number one reason tenants take a bad deal is running out of runway — a landlord who knows your lease ends in six weeks is negotiating with a very different hand.
Does a tenant representative cost me anything?
No. On a lease the landlord pays the tenant representative's commission out of the deal, and it is built into the transaction whether or not you bring one. Going unrepresented does not reduce the cost — it means the only broker in the room works for the landlord.
How much square footage does my business need?
It depends on your use and how your space is programmed — not a single per-employee number. This calculator builds your requirement from real functions (workstations, meeting rooms, storage, circulation) and adds a load factor for corridors and shared areas to produce a rentable square-footage range you can compare against listings.
What is the difference between usable and rentable square feet?
Usable SF is the space inside your four walls. Rentable SF adds a load factor (typically around 30%) for corridors, lobbies, restrooms, and shared building areas. Landlords quote rentable SF, so that is the number to use when comparing lease listings.
Is the 200 square feet per employee rule accurate?
It is a rough myth that often overshoots or starves a real requirement. Actual office needs vary widely with workspace density, meeting culture, reception, and support space. Programming space up from function — as this tool does — is far more accurate than a flat per-person figure.
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