Tenant brokers normally negotiate against landlords, but Charles P. Laginestra negotiates with the landlord’s logic in mind. That distinction, built over 15 years on the landlord side of some of New York City’s most complex commercial transactions, is what separates accretive representation from costly guidance.
Laginestra, Senior Vice President at CBRE, has spent his career learning how landlords actually make decisions and that knowledge has become the foundation of how he represents tenants. “I know which no’s are soft and which are structural and which are just anchoring,” Laginestra says. “My clients don’t waste time fighting unwinnable battles. Instead, they win where it actually matters.”
What the Landlord’s Chair Teaches You About the Tenant’s Position
Sitting on the landlord side for 15 years teaches you things that no amount of experience of tenant representation can replicate. Capital stack constraints, lender covenants, leasing velocity pressure, and internal political dynamics within ownership structures determine what a landlord can actually move on and what is fixed, regardless of how the negotiation is framed. While tenant brokers often see the negotiation, Laginestra sees the system producing it.
The practical result is a fundamentally different kind of representation. When Laginestra engages a landlord on behalf of a tenant, he is not guessing at motivation. He understands which ownership structures prioritize gross rent as their success metric, which are focused on net effective rent and how capital is deployed. Those motivations are not the same, and the leverage available to a tenant shifts entirely depending on which one is sitting across the table.
“That is where I excel,” Laginestra says, “and where many of my peers fail to have the same perception.” The ability to distinguish among a soft ‘no’, a structural limitation, and a deliberate anchoring tactic allows his clients to focus their energy on the terms that are movable: flexibility, future control, and long-term downside protection.
Why COVID Was the Best Market Intelligence Available
During the pandemic, most brokers and owners did what the environment seemed to demand: they throttled down, waited, and preserved energy for whenever normalcy returned. Laginestra did the opposite. After researching how quickly New York City recovered following the Spanish Flu, and observing that a small group of brokers were still actively touring and pursuing deals while the rest of the market paused, he made a calculated bet on inevitability.
“I knew the return to office was ultimately inevitable,” Laginestra says, “based on approximately 300 thousand years of social programming for Homo sapiens.” The conviction was not sentimental. It was strategic. By doubling his efforts during the period when most competitors were standing still, he ensured that when the post-COVID market arrived, he was already operating at full speed, while others were still finding their footing.
The result was achieving over 90% portfolio occupancy at a time when the broader market was still debating whether office was viable. He stripped the leasing strategy down to first principles: who still needed to make decisions, what friction could be removed without damaging long-term building value, and treated every deal as an input to the next one rather than an isolated transaction. “Velocity compounds,” Laginestra says. “Once it returns, occupancy follows.”
What the Paul Weiss Deal Revealed About How Large Transactions Actually Fail
The Paul Weiss relocation, one of the largest office deals in recent U.S. history, carried a specific risk that most large transactions carry and most advisors fail to name early enough to engineer around. The challenge was not economics. It was an asymmetry of risk. For Paul Weiss, a long-term commitment in a volatile moment created simultaneous reputational, cultural, and financial exposure. On the ownership side, tying approximately 50% of a flagship asset to one tenant’s unpredictable future posed a significant concentration risk. “Big deals don’t die because of economics,” Laginestra says. “They die when the inherent risks aren’t acknowledged early enough to be engineered around.”
The resolution came from aligning the uncertainty rather than pretending it did not exist. Both sides stopped optimizing for optics and started solving for durability, phasing, flexibility, and future-proofing, built structurally into the deal from the beginning, rather than being added as concessions later. The lesson generalizes. Understanding the full risk profile of a transaction from the outset, rather than discovering it mid-negotiation, is what allows advisors to build structures that hold.
The 2027 Warning
The current market is moving toward a convergence that will punish hesitation on both sides of the table. Landlords are delaying decisive capital investment in a flight-to-quality environment. Tenants are delaying long-term commitments while waiting for greater market clarity.
By 2027, those two hesitations will collide. Owners who postponed modernization will find that liquidity does not equal relevance. Tenants waiting for certainty will find that the buildings capable of absorbing their future growth are already committed, and that rents in quality buildings continue to appreciate. “By 2027, the market will not reward optionality,” Laginestra says. “It will reward conviction. The regret will come from mistaking caution for prudence.”
Follow Charles P. Laginestra on LinkedIn or visit CBRE for more insights on commercial real estate strategy, tenant representation, and navigating the NYC office market.
