Every lease has two prices: the face rent everyone quotes and the effective rent everyone actually pays. Confusing the two is how new agents overprice stock and underprice their own commission expectations.
Why face rent lies
Face rent is the headline figure written into the lease — say $700/sqm net for a CBD office floor. It is what appears in the agency agreement, the marketing material and the landlord's rent roll. But it says nothing about what the tenant actually contributes to the landlord's cash flow once you net off what the landlord had to give away to get the deal signed.
Landlords protect face rent because it sets the benchmark for the next review, the next valuation and the next tenant's negotiation. A landlord who drops face rent from $700 to $600 has reset the market. A landlord who holds face rent at $700 but gives 12 months rent-free over a 5-year term has not reset anything on paper — even though the tenant is paying roughly the same net amount either way.