Going the Extra Mile in Commercial Real Estate Leasing

The commercial real estate leasing market is quite lucrative providing you understand your local area and the requirements of tenants.  As part of that process, you do need to know a lot of tenants throughout the local business community.

Ultimately as an agent you would like to achieve dominant market share and referral business.  Both of these things help you to gain future listing and leasing opportunity.  This then says that you should go the extra mile when it comes to servicing your landlords and tenants as part of the property transaction.

Here are some ideas to help you with that extra level of service when it comes to providing property leasing services.  The same rules apply with real estate agents in industrial, office, and retail property.

1. Keep well ahead of the current property transactions so that you understand the levels of market rental and leasing incentives.  Both of these things will change throughout the year based on the supply and demand for vacant space.
2. Depending on your local property market, there may be incentives that impact the average lease transaction.  It should be remembered that the incentives are not generally free.  There are amortized to back into the lease deal and the cost of the incentive is recovered over time together with the appropriate level of interest on cost.  The tenant may not be aware of that fact, but the landlord should be.  Agents working on behalf of the landlord should encourage the recovery of incentive cost.
3. When working with quality properties, you can create a cash flow analysis as it applies to the average lease deal.  The net present value of the lease transaction can be assessed based on known lease term, rental increases, and market rental expectations.  This then gives the landlord a reason to do a deal and vacancy the long term value of the transaction.  The starting rent for the lease is no longer so critical; the long term value of cash takes a priority.
4. When a lease transaction is being negotiated, you can provide a fit out guide to the tenant so that they know the rules and regulations that apply to fitout design.  It also helps them with the specifications for fit out planning and construction.
5. A quality building should have rules and regulations that apply to property usage.  The tenants can therefore have a Building Manual issued to them setting out the rules as they apply to occupancy.
6. A quality building with multiple tenants should be the subject of a tenant retention plan.  The tenant retention plan should be part of the building annual business plan.  Within the tenant retention plan you can also make assumptions regards lease occupancy, market rentals, together with the lease terms and conditions.

All of these things would indicate that you can go the extra mile when it comes to providing professional property leasing services to the landlords of commercial, industrial, and retail property.  In this way you will grow the opportunity for referral business and ongoing repeat business from the same clients.