Shell delivery or fitted out: what each costs, who pays for what, and which strategy

The French office market has developed standardised delivery levels, but their precise definition varies with the parties, the city and the period. Developer and occupier must agree contractually on the exact content of each level before the lease is signed.

Category A: what the market really means

Category A is the most widespread delivery standard for new French office buildings. It systematically includes structure, façades, roof, suspended ceilings, services distribution to the floor terminals, power cabling to the floors, a basic floor finish, and sanitary accommodation on each level.

What it does NOT include, and occupiers often forget: final data cabling, the riser only, not the distribution to each desk, internal partitioning, final finishes such as paint, carpet and timber flooring, desk lighting, and the raised access floor.

An occupier moving into category A without budgeting for fit-out under-states its real installation cost by 310 to 1,220 €/m² according to its profile.

Fit-out, the internal work falling to the occupier in a category A building, is the most variable item in a new office move. It depends directly on the nature of the activity, the corporate culture and the specific functional requirements.

These bands cover the finishing and fit-out works. They exclude furniture at 120 to 800 € a workstation according to range, IT infrastructure, active cabling, servers, machines, and the move itself. The total installation budget in a new office is fit-out plus furniture plus IT, that is 510 to 4,080 €/m² according to profile.

The split between developer and occupier is not fixed; it is a commercial negotiation whose key parameters are the delivery level written into the lease, the rent-free period granted and any landlord contribution to the fit-out works.

The rent-free period is not free money

The rent-free period granted to the occupier, three to nine months according to the market and the delivery level, is the financial counterpart of the fit-out work the occupier must fund. It is not a gain for the occupier, it offsets the fit-out budget.

For example: six months free on a rent of 350 €/m²/year is 175 €/m² of compensation. If the fit-out costs 600 €/m², the occupier funds 425 €/m² from its own resources. That imbalance explains the trend among large occupiers to negotiate higher delivery levels rather than longer rent-free periods.

A landlord contribution to fit-out is increasingly frequent in premium office leases. The landlord undertakes to contribute financially to the occupier's fit-out in exchange for a longer firm term or a slightly higher rent.

• Typical amount: 100 to 410 €/m² according to the negotiation, the local market and the firm term.
• Advantage for the occupier: it reduces the capital tied up in fit-out, a strong argument for fast-growing companies or those in transformation.
• Advantage for the landlord: it secures a long firm term, typically six to nine years minimum, and improves the building's attractiveness against the competition.
• Condition: works funded by the contribution remain the landlord's property at the end of the lease; the occupier cannot take its fit-out away without reinstating.

Since 2020 the market has been shifting progressively from category A towards enhanced A or fitted out, under the pressure of two converging factors.

In a competitive labour market, companies can no longer afford four to six months of work between taking possession and moving their teams in. Enhanced category A, which includes partitioning and lighting, cuts that to six to ten weeks. Standard fitted delivery cuts it to two to four weeks. For a large occupier of 500 desks, each month of installation costs rent on the old building and disorganisation; the economic equation clearly favours the higher delivery level.

The spread of hybrid working, two or three days in the office, is reshaping fit-outs: fewer assigned desks, more collaborative space, more acoustic treatment. Those arrangements are complex to retrofit into a category A building; it is more efficient to build them into the design from the start in an enhanced or fitted building conceived for flexible working.

The construction economist can quantify precisely the effect of each delivery scenario on the developer's total cost, and estimate the fit-out cost for the occupier according to its profile. That double reading, developer cost and occupier cost, is the most effective negotiating instrument for finding the right contractual balance between the parties.

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The gap between standard category A at 1,630 to 2,240 €/m² and premium fitted delivery at 3,270 to 4,590 €/m² represents 1,020 to 2,350 €/m² of additional construction cost for the developer. That differential is partly offset by the shorter rent-free period granted and by easier letting. On the occupier's side, fit-out varies from 310 to 2,550 €/m² according to the nature of the activity. The landlord contribution and the rent-free period are the two levers for rebalancing the finances between the parties. The current trend is a shift towards enhanced category A on prime new buildings, driven by shorter installation times and the rise of flexible working.

Reference basis of the figures

These bands are orders of magnitude for framing, and their reference market is the Paris region. They serve to place a budget at the earliest stages and to compare building types with one another. They replace neither a tender exercise nor an estimate prepared on drawings, and they are not a record of prices actually charged.

The ratios per square metre and per item on this page are stated in January 2026 values. They were updated from January 2025 values, the basis adopted for the whole cocoon, using the BT01 all-trades index published monthly by INSEE on its 2010 base: 132.0 in January 2025, 134.7 in January 2026, a rise of about 2 %.

The global amounts quoted as examples, and any rents, charges or receipts expressed per year or per night, remain on their own basis: a building cost index does not apply to them.

To bring the ratios forward, apply the usual revision formula: updated value = page value × (BT01 for the month in question / 134.7). The index has kept rising since: it stood at 138,3 in June 2026, the last value published when this page was checked, that is 2,7 % above the reference base. BT01 measures contractors' input costs, wages and social charges, materials, plant and energy, not the prices actually tendered.

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