5. Leases

As the lessee, we currently lease real estate space under noncancelable operating lease agreements for our turn-key data centers at NY1, LA1, DC1, DC2, DE1, and DE2, and our corporate headquarters located in Denver, Colorado. Our leases have remaining lease terms of 1 year to 20 years, some of which include options to extend the leases for up to 20 years. We do not include any of our renewal options in our lease terms for calculating our lease liability as the renewal options allow us to maintain operational flexibility and we are not reasonably certain we will exercise these options at this time. The weighted-average remaining lease term for our operating leases was five years at both March 31, 2018, and December 31, 2017. The weighted-average discount rate was 4.8% at both March 31, 2018, and December 31, 2017.

The components of lease expense were as follows (in thousands):


	Three Months Ended March 31,
	2018		2017
Lease expense:
Operating lease expense	$	5,227	$	5,088
Variable lease expense		1,173		874
Rent expense	$	6,400	$	5,962

The future minimum lease payments to be paid under noncancelable leases in effect at March 31, 2018, are as follows (in thousands):


	Operating
Period / Year Ending December 31,	Leases
2018	$	14,653
2019		22,661
2020		22,991
2021		22,740
2022		15,613
Thereafter		12,039
Total lease payments	$	110,697
Less imputed interest		(13,389)
Total	$	97,308