How Leasing Agents Can Get More Listings of Commercial Property
When you are a leasing agent in commercial real estate, there are plenty of challenges to balance listings with tenant requirements. Having plenty of listings always helps the enquiry process and will take you forward as a leasing agent faster. So, how do you find those listings and plenty of them?
It’s all about matching people and properties; that is where the listings you have can and will support you with more enquiry. In the leasing ‘game’, vacant premises and signboards will create the enquiry. It is all about market coverage and gathering the listings around you.
Boost Your Property Inventory of Vacancies
Here are some ideas to help you boost your listing inventory in your location:
- Talk to lots of businesses every day. This is the direct contact process. The best way to do that is by making plenty of outbound calls, with some of those calls advancing to meetings. The business telephone book for a location can help you with that momentum if you do not have many businesses now on your prospect list. Recognize that your lists of companies will allow you substantially as a leasing agent.
- Occupancy needs can be tracked. As part of those calls mentioned above, you ask about future occupancy needs and any moving intentions. Most business owners will tell you of the dates that impact their lease decisions in the location.
- Location canvassing tends to work very well. This is the concept of breaking up an area or precinct into smaller zones to make your calls and comprehensively cover a building of multiple tenants or a zone of business buildings. Another way of making this work is to drop your business card off in a location, building or street. Record the areas where you have done that and move through the precinct over time.
- Look around your location and check out the current listings with all agents. Every lease signboard placed in a site can be a base of focus for you to canvass that zone. An existing signboard can be the catalyst for local businesses in the area looking to move around, expand, or contract. Use the momentum of other agents to make your canvassing calls in a location.
- Understand the needs of franchise groups from a leasing perspective. Local franchise groups will have property needs. It just depends on their leasing model and how they locate and find franchisees. Invariably some preferred suburbs and locations will suit them for ongoing or future occupancy.
- Know all the larger and more substantial landlords. When you investigate a precinct, there will be significant buildings, and some of those buildings will be part of a substantial investment property holding. So, it is the owners of those portfolios that you should get to know.
- Categorize all Landlords for potential. Some landlords are better than others when you consider the ‘client potential’ in your business. Some of those landlords will already be working with other agents. So, there are some choices to make in how you connect with those landlords and people. If you are going to attract more landlords to your services, there is one thing that will make all the difference. That will be your tenant and lease expiry register for the location. If you are continually talking to business owners, that register is easy to collate and maintain. From that register, you can put your lease transactions together and make more calls in an ongoing way.
Some of these strategies may work more effectively for you and your preferred property types when considering all these leasing ideas.
It is easy to see that the business strategies of a leasing agent are quite specific. Build your real estate day and weeks around talking to people, and particularly landlords and tenants. Ask questions about property and premises needs. Soon you will find the leads and the transactions that you are looking for.
