Creating a Competitive Edge in Leasing Property
The commercial real estate leasing market never disappears, and it is an excellent complement to work with if you are a real estate sales agent. Landlords or tenants are good clients for an agent to have locally as they lead to sales activities later.
Leasing commercial property is a specialist and active segment of the market. Where do you start? In today’s changing economic conditions, leasing premises from landlords to tenants can form a substantial part of your commission opportunities as an agent.
So, there are easy and professional ways you can create a comprehensive and competitive edge as a real estate agent.
Progressing Leasing Services
Are you ready to progress in brokerage leasing? Creating that local market edge you want in leasing property is not all about offering discounts on fees or commissions.
Notably, many ordinary agents do just that because they have no other way of attracting the interests of landlords or tenants as clients. Clients want results leasing before they will think about other things.
If you can show a client the real value and strategy that you bring to their leasing requirement, then discounts will not be an issue.
Leasing Agents Standing Out
How can you stand out as the best agent for premises leasing in your town or city? Why would people want to use your services? To be the best leasing agent in commercial or retail property, it is all about offering the best and most complete premises solutions for your clients and their property requirements.
Provide specialist leasing services, whether it is finding a tenant or finding some premises for a tenant. You can work both ways. You can always be better than the other agents in your location. Try it out.
Be prepared to find vacant premises and then tune your real estate services to the clients that you are serving. Landlords need vacancy solutions, and tenants need premises to operate from.
Specialization for Leasing Agents
In acting for landlords or tenants, as a client type, think about how you can cover all the issues and changes in the market. Information about the changing local property market can be a valuable leverage point for you to operate from.
In other words, you can be a landlord’s agent to solve vacancy issues, or you can be a tenant’s agent in finding premises. Either way is good.
Here are some ideas below to help you establish that exceptional ‘edge’ in your commercial real estate leasing services.
How to Connect with Business Owners
Connecting with local business owners – Given your location and preferred property types, think about the streets, buildings, and precincts. Some of those factors will be more active than others, so get to know where the property changes are and where the pressures are.
Know the facts about rents and vacancies and then talk about them in every conversation with landlords or tenants.
Comprehensively connect with all business owners in your town, city, or allocated precincts. Of course, that will take a reasonable degree of organisation, so use your database or spreadsheets to track where you are, how things are changing, and who you have spoken with.
Tracking Vacancies Locally
If you travel through your real estate market frequently you will find vacancies in buildings. They will be trigger points to talk to the property owners and see if leasing services can be offered.
As part of your approach, local property leasing trends in rents, incentives, lease terms and conditions, and vacant space will help you grow the services you offer to your clients, be they the landlords or tenants.
Landlord List Building
It is interesting to note that most investors will own and prefer to own particular property types in your location. They invest in properties that they understand. They are leasing clients.
Some investors choose to own properties in a selected group of precincts or suburbs. That is because the growth of a portfolio of investment property can easily be monitored and improved when things are localised.
So, who are the property investors in your location that you know, want to know, and can service now? You can build some real momentum in property and premises leasing from those investors.
Actual Rentals and Market Trends
What is happening now with the rents, incentives, vacancies, time on the market, and lease terms and conditions? Each property type will have ‘variables’ that you can monitor.
As part of that, you can keep charts and statistics on the trends over the last few years and how things are expected to change. Those facts are always helpful with leasing negotiations and property listing activities, so ensure that your information about the ‘trends’ is visual in graphical form.
Note that the property market doesn’t always go ‘up’ when leasing premises. Business and economic cycles will impact the leasing process. Business sentiment will affect the thoughts of tenants in any relocation. That then moves the elements of ‘supply and demand’.
Current Property Market Negotiations
When you work with several properties, or landlords and tenants, you will see recurring negotiation issues or ‘hurdles’ that you come across in most locations and property types. Typically, they are issues about the level of rent to be paid, the lease terms on offer, the quality of the property improvements, and the space availability.
With all of these ‘hurdles’ or negotiation points, you can prepare for what people will say or try to negotiate around. Practice the dialogues that you use with tenants and landlords.
Use the current market conditions to set priorities in your negotiation practice topics. That can help you significantly with the following listing, negotiation, or communication.
Strategic Leasing Approach
When you are about to lease a property or work for a landlord or tenant as a client, think about the quality of the lease you are to assist with. Put some quality into the lease terms that would suit your client.
Tune the lease negotiations to improve your client’s potential outcome. The best leasing agents are very ‘strategic’ in their offer and how they service their clients. That is why we have specialist landlord agents and tenant agents.
Constant Client Contact System
These are the simple requirements of keeping in touch with people; they are your prospects and clients. The more people you know and the more frequently you connect with them, the better it will be for you in leasing premises.
What do you talk to them about? Try premises requirements, tenant movement, business relocation, rent affordability, and expansion or relocation.
Depending on the client services you are targeting with leasing and the preferred groups of people, you can have those conversations with landlords or tenants.
Leasing Agent Competitive Edge
Looking back over all of these recommendations, you can see that the way to create a competitive edge in commercial real estate leasing is by offering some unique and high-level value factors for your clients.
Landlords or tenants are both quality property leasing channels of ‘clients’. Talk to your clients and prospects frequently, and you will find the vacancies and leasing transactions or listings you are looking for.