TL;DR: Nearly all large corporations delayed or deferred at least one major lease decision in 2025 due to lack of data, misalignment, unclear requirements, slow approvals, or external market factors.
- 87% of enterprises delayed portfolio decisions in the past 12 months
- Enterprises with poorly integrated portfolio management systems were 7x more likely to delay decisions than those with highly integrated systems.
- 75% of the enterprises that delayed decisions cited two or more reasons.
- Half of enterprises delayed decisions due to external market factors such as the limited availability of alternatives or budget constraints.
- Enterprises with less than $10 billion annual revenue were twice as likely to cite “external market factors” as a cause of delay than larger organizations.
In the spring of 2026, Tango commissioned a survey of real estate leaders at enterprises with at least $500 million in revenue as part of our Corporate Real Estate Decision Readiness Index.
We asked respondents to share reasons why they delayed or deferred lease decisions in the past 12 months. Only 13% said they hadn’t delayed any lease decisions, or that they weren’t sure if they had.
As a leading provider of real estate solutions for enterprises, Tango regularly helps organizations address many of these causes of delays, and we wanted to understand how prevalent they are at some of the world’s largest organizations. Our survey explored how these organizations make real estate decisions and where their processes tend to break down.
Deferring or delaying lease decisions is often a symptom of larger portfolio management issues, so we zeroed in on why this happens. Here’s what we found.
Enterprises with poorly integrated systems were 7x more likely to delay decisions
Most portfolio decision delays are caused by poor data or visibility. When the lease, utilization, or cost data needed to make informed decisions is incomplete, inaccessible, or difficult to model, stakeholders struggle to reach alignment.
Nine out of ten (91%) of enterprises we surveyed used at least three systems, tools, or manual processes to make a single portfolio decision. Only 6% of these respondents said they hadn’t delayed any major portfolio decisions in the past 12 months. But when we look at enterprises that could make decisions using just one or two systems, tools, or manual processes, 50% said they didn’t delay any portfolio decisions.
A well-integrated portfolio management system can’t control external market factors or an unpredictable approval process, but it ensures that if lease, cost, or utilization data exists, it’s available where it matters. Cross-functional stakeholders can work from a single source of truth, and scenarios can account for total occupancy costs. There’s less room for disagreement, fewer assumptions, and more time to consider tradeoffs between options.
Enterprises delay portfolio decisions because the cost of a wrong choice is high. But when an integrated system centralizes information, the wrong choices are more obvious from the start, reducing delays.
Enterprises with well-integrated systems had the fewest causes of delays
When we asked enterprise leaders to select all of the reasons they delayed or deferred major portfolio decisions in the past 12 months, the majority (78%) cited at least two reasons. Nearly half of respondents (45%) cited three or more. And 9% selected five or more causes of delays.
Many of the reasons a business may delay CRE portfolio decisions are highly related. Cost data, utilization data, lease data, and ESG requirements come from separate lines of business, but gaps in any of these could prevent an organization from accurately modeling scenarios, cause misalignment between stakeholders, lengthen approval processes, or create misunderstandings about how organizational needs relate to external market factors.
Respondents with the most well-integrated systems (those who only need to gather data from 1–2 tools or processes) had far fewer causes of delay. Half of respondents with well-integrated systems still experience two or more causes of delay, but only 25% have three, and 0% have more than three.
The inverse relationship was also true. Organizations that needed data from 5 or more tools or processes were significantly more likely to cite several causes of delays. The vast majority (79%) of this segment cited at least three reasons for delays, 58% cited four or more, and a startling 25% had five or more causes of delays.
Data is the foundation of quality portfolio decisions, and integration ensures that stakeholders work from a shared understanding of their organization’s position. A well-integrated system is also more likely to actually provide the underlying data and insights decision-makers need, rather than turning the process into a manual scavenger hunt.
Half of enterprises delay decisions due to external market factors
“External market factors” were the leading cause of delays (51% of respondents), followed closely by unexpectedly long approval processes (46%). When we asked enterprises which market factors had the greatest constraint on their portfolio strategy, four factors stood out:
- Capital cost and budget constraints (22%)
- Lease commitment inflexibility and long-dated obligations (21%)
- Volatile or uncertain space demand / utilization (21%)
- Limited availability of high-quality, compliant space (19%)
Each of these factors can significantly increase the risk of making a wrong decision—and the time it takes to make the right one. And while respondents only selected the factor representing the greatest constraint, these factors aren’t isolated. They compound.
Rent, maintenance, insurance, utility rates, and other occupancy expenses can vary widely between locations that otherwise appear similar on paper.
High quality office space is hard to come by (and the pool is growing more limited as building standards rise). The options are few, opportunities are rare, and a poor choice locks enterprises into multi-year lease commitments that are difficult to unwind.
Utilization data was one of the data sources enterprises were least confident in, with less than half describing their data as “good” or better. When data confidence is low, it’s extremely difficult to be sure a building can meet demand for space and avoid disrupting workplace operations.
With that in mind, it may look like good business sense to delay portfolio decisions until the risk can be mitigated. But as we discuss in the full Corporate Real Estate Decision Readiness Index, delaying can actually increase risk by eliminating options, and instead, this should be a glaring signal that portfolio management practices need to better address these constraints.
Larger enterprises were most impacted by poor internal alignment
The reasons enterprises cited for delaying portfolio decisions were fairly consistent, with one key exception. Larger enterprises most often delayed decisions due to unexpectedly long leadership decisions and lack of stakeholder alignment between stakeholders.
When asked to identify the primary source of delay or friction in their decision-making process, larger enterprises were most likely to blame “cross-functional alignment—stakeholders cannot agree on assumptions or priorities,” (33% compared to 18% of smaller companies). Additionally, 13% selected “Leadership approval—decision authority is unclear or slow” as the primary source of delay, compared to 7% of smaller companies.
Larger organizations inevitably face greater challenges in reaching stakeholder alignment. Just 20% of larger enterprises we surveyed said they had “well-integrated” systems, which means for most, every additional stakeholder may bring a different set of assumptions to the process. Approvals have to battle through not just competing priorities, but competing versions of truth.
Summary: Streamlined tools and processes reduce portfolio delays
Enterprises that need fewer CRE systems, tools, and manual processes are far less likely to delay major portfolio decisions. They also cite fewer reasons for delays when they arise.
Integrated CRE systems empower stakeholders to work from a shared set of assumptions. They enable more robust scenario modeling, enabling CRE leaders to approve holistic decisions from the outset rather than continually restarting the entire process as stakeholders add new information.
Our full report, the 2026 Corporate Real Estate Decision Readiness Index, explores the challenges of modern CRE decisions in greater detail, examining how “tradeoff stacks” enable organizations to consistently choose scenarios with the best overall outcomes.
