Commercial Real Estate Leasing Brokers – A Vacancy is an Amazing Opportunity for New Business and Commissions

In commercial real estate today, a vacancy is an opportunity in so many different ways. Many landlords will have vacancies to rectify and tenants to find. Any landlord with an unrealistically high level of rental is likely to suffer an extended vacancy over a long period of time. You can be the solution to the problem providing you have a substantial database of tenants in your location and within the property type. Sell your leasing services based on the strength and the variety of your database.

Your database of tenants is in fact the foundation of your commercial real estate business so treat it with the focus it deserves. When you connect with new people every day to start new business relationships or contacts and extend others, the database starts to take shape and improve with qualified prospects and clients.

If you are struggling with you real estate business now, take the time to review your database and its contents, and the new strategies you can evolve to grow the list of contacts and opportunities.  Consider the pipeline of activities that you can apply to your contacts and VIP’s.  Use information as your leverage in attracting sustained relationships with business people and property owners.

Local Leasing Fees

Let’s say that there are some vacancies in the local area for you to work on. You can build a set of property investment solutions to offer within your commercial real estate services. Here are some ideas to help with that:

• Tenancy management – when working with larger properties, the lease issues and the occupancy negotiations can be extensive. Many landlords look to offload tenant management requirements to agents and brokers. If this is a market segment to you, be aware of the complexity of the property, the demands of lease interpretation, the amount of work to be done, and the time involved. Set your fees based on the assumptions you make for time versus task.
• Strategic tenancy mix – a number of tenants in the same building will create pressures on the tenancy mix. A tenant mix can be also frustrated by permitted use, lease expiry, the need for expansion or change within some of the tenancies, the volatility of a business segment to survive in tougher economic times, and the requirements of the landlord for rental cash flow and investment returns. A larger property can benefit from direct management of the tenancy mix to a strategic plan set prior to the end of each financial year for the upcoming period of 12 months. The concept here is that the decisions associated with tenancy mix, leasing, and rental negotiations are all predetermined in the strategic tenancy mix plan. This then makes it a lot easier when it comes to resolving vacancy problems and moving tenants within the same property.
• Market rental negotiations – whilst many landlords like to see a continuing improvement in market rental within a property investment, the realities of the property market including changes to local business sentiment may dictate other rental circumstances and challenges when it comes to rental negotiation. Monitor the levels of market rental as they apply to the location and the property type. Identify the differences between rental types, properties, and tenancy types. For a fee you can be the expert to negotiate market rentals for landlords in today’s property market. If you have sufficient market rental evidence, the leasing process and the negotiation of any new lease and/or rental is a lot easier.

Every commercial real estate agent or broker should charge a specific fee for these property services.  Don’t underquote your fees just to win a leasing appointment; set your fees for the specialist skills you bring to a leasing task.

Database of Tenants

If you are to earn the bulk of your commission from the leasing segment of the commercial property industry, focus firstly on gathering information relating to market trends and market evidence. Then, and from that point start growing your database of tenants directly from prospecting activities through the location and across the property type. Any agent or broker with a substantial database of tenants will be of real value to the landlords that they serve.  It is hard for a client to ignore an agent that comprehensively covers all tenants and businesses in a location.