Developing High Quality Leasing Systems in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage

Leasing opportunities in commercial real estate will always exist in any economy and at any time.  On that basis they give leverage to agents looking to improve their market share and interaction with property owners.  When you develop a leasing system, you are creating a pipeline of opportunities with both future sales and property managements.  That then leads to commission growth potential.

When it comes to researching your town or city, there will always be new business leads to seize when it comes to tenant relocation and lease negotiation.  Landlords need professional assistance when it comes to locating quality tenants; they simply haven’t got the database of business decision makers to find a potential tenant easily.  Top leasing agents can bring exceptional value to local landlords in their property market using their database in this way.

Here are some factors to help you establish a leasing system within your commercial real estate business.  You can merge local property factors into these specialized concepts:

1. In a regular and ongoing way make contact with all the businesses in your local area.  Understand the upcoming lease expiry dates and lease renewal dates.  At approximately 12 months out from those critical dates you can make contact with the business owners or the local managers to help them with recent property market information surrounding rentals, property availability, and leasing strategies.
2. With the larger businesses, you can develop a service specifically associated with tenant advocacy.  In other words you can represent the tenant as they explore the market for a quality property and a satisfactory lease situation.  It is notable that many of the larger businesses will need professional help like this when it comes to finding the right premises in the right location.  Those larger businesses are suitably geared to afford and appoint a professional leasing executive for that purpose.  Smaller businesses simply don’t have the available cash flow or the desire to pay the commissions in appointing an agent to work on their behalf.
3. Comprehensively cover the local property market on a street by street basis so that you know every tenant by business type and lease expiry date.  In that way you can work 12 months in advance seeking to help those businesses relocate with the best possible leasing deal.  Regular ongoing contact will help you with this opportunity.
4. Incentives will come and go from the property market based on the available amount of space and the levels of current enquiry.  Understand the differences in incentive that can apply in a leasing situation locally; supply and demand for space will impact incentives availability.  Some landlords will be more flexible than others when it comes to providing incentives, and on that basis you can help the landlord with occupancy alternatives as they seek to attract a satisfactory leasing deal.  Discounted rental, rent free periods, and fit out incentives are very common to attract a tenant to long term occupancy.  It is your job to identify the opportunities and strategies behind each type of incentive when it comes to each property type and the targets of the landlord.
5. When you work for a number of landlords from a leasing perspective, you can provide them with tenant retention plans and market rental strategies.  In the first instance you are seeking to help the landlord retain their quality tenants, and then secondly support any lease transaction with a realistic strong market rental for the period of the lease.
6. The leasing outcome for the landlord can be strengthened by the quality lease document.  Encourage the landlord to appoint an experienced property solicitor that understands lease documentation given the quality and the type of property in question.  Over time the tenancy mix within the property will be strengthened by the quality of lease documentation.  At the time of any future sale, buyers will be more interested in purchasing a property that is supported by professionally prepared and relevant lease documents.

So there are some things to do here when it comes to establishing a leasing system in your role as a professional leasing agent.  Take the time to specialize in leasing property types and improving market rentals.  The landlords that you serve require leasing experts like that to help them with rental cash flow and improving property values.