How to Increase Your Influence in Commercial Property Management

There is plenty of competition in commercial and retail property management in most locations. It is a preferred part of the property industry for many brokerages. The cash flow from the property management fees provides stability to brokerage activities and business building.

So what can you do there? How can you win the property management business? To stand out as the ‘managing agent of choice’, it is fundamentally essential that you increase your profile and your influence with the property management people that matter; they are the landlords of the property market.

A Key Question for Landlords

Why would a landlord be interested in connecting with you or using your services?

So, what is your strategy around that? How can you do more with your profile locally with landlords? Try some of these for starters:

● Lowering arrears – Most landlords want their rent and income stability. You could call that ‘risk reduction’. That involves reducing the arrears problems or even removing them entirely from the tenancy mix and leasing status for the property. It can be said that most buildings and investment properties will have arrears problems at times. Focus on the arrears challenges and lower them for your landlord clients. How can you do that? Review the property and the tenancy mix comprehensively to get your answers. Look at the strengths and weaknesses.
● Finding better tenants – Some tenants are better than others, and some of those tenants are suitable for particular properties and locations. That is where the ‘strategic’ side of leasing comes into play. Understand the tenants that are best suited to your properties and neighbourhoods. Approach your priority tenants.
● Zero vacancies – It may be a ‘tall order’ to remove vacancies entirely from a large managed property, but it is certainly worth trying. Lowering the vacancies and putting in place a leasing optimisation plan would be an excellent way to go initially for the landlords that you serve. They can then be the priority landlords to work with.
● Tenant retention planning – Looking at the tenant mix now; can you grade your tenants to decide what tenants should be encouraged to stay in the property for the longer term? Review the tenancy mix comprehensively so that you understand when the leases will expire and who the high value and high-quality tenants are within the property. Tell the landlord how you will be prioritising the tenancy negotiations and the tenants to achieve the best results in occupancy over time. This then becomes the tenant retention plan for the asset each year; it is something that is reviewed quarterly. Make sure that you have a fee base allowance for renegotiating leases with sitting tenants.
● High-quality buildings – It is a fact that high-quality buildings in a location will create more enquiry in an ongoing way. That is the enquiry that you want from tenants in the neighbourhood and business owners. Create a list of high-quality buildings in your location so that you can categorise them for ongoing contact and tenant mix review. you can also determine why tenants like to be in a building, street, or precinct.
● Market updates – You can provide some specific market updates to your clients in commercial real estate brokerage, covering the investment topics of rents, incentives, and lease enquiries. They are the indicators of a thriving and active real estate leasing market. Get to know the tenants, the landlords, and communicate the benchmarks that apply to lease standards of rent incentives, and continuous occupancy.
● Landlords that listen – Many landlords will listen to you when you share market information regularly regarding the leasing in the location and the property types. Engage with your landlord’s regularly to advise them on how leasing transactions, enquiry, and occupancy standards are changing. Given that you should be talking to plenty of tenants each day, the whole strategy of leasing contact becomes relatively easy.

So these ideas will help you engage with landlords and tenants in your location. They will help you provide relevant and real-time information of interest to the players of the property leasing market.

Ultimately, this information will help you increase your influence on Commercial and Retail Property Management activities. Over time that means more leasing fees.