How to Keep Your Cool When the Commercial Property Market is Difficult

The commercial property market will shift and change many times throughout the year. There will be peaks and troughs in property performance and availability within certain locations and within certain property types.

Your property zone or territory will be changed.  The interests of investors and tenants will also change throughout the year. 

So your career and your focus as an agent or broker needs to adjust and change given the prevailing market conditions and the opportunities that will always be there in your local area.   You can find some real opportunities that way.

So when the market is difficult or changing, the challenge for you is to remain cool and focused. Understand your customer types and property types. Remain focused in the segments of the property market that offer the best opportunities over time.

Keep it Simple

Simplicity is always an advantage in commercial real estate brokerage. Don’t complicate your career or your industry focus. Don’t do too many things simultaneously to attract new business; don’t attempt to control too many market segments over a large area.

Inexperienced agents will generally try to sell or lease anything that they come across, with little segmentation or selectivity. The fact of the matter is that they then do not have the right market share or understand the market segments that they are focusing in; they are missing out on the quality listings. Inexperienced agents will generally accept any level or variation of open listing that they can find, and waste a lot of their personal time for little or no reward. Focus your efforts and remain directly involved in a specific marketing plan. Stay cool under pressure.

Here are some ideas to help you direct your business skills and strategies when the commercial real estate market is changing or you have lost a listing momentum:

1. Get back into the market to talk to the right people in the location. Those people will usually be property owners, investors, or business owners. Find out what they are thinking when it comes to investment and occupancy. They are likely to know more about the local area than you do. Ask questions about neighboring properties, and neighboring businesses. Track the stories that you hear and investigate any snippets of opportunity.
2. Revisit and refresh your database. Focus back into your client list and your historic database records. Find people to talk to so that you can ask about property intentions and challenges. Each day you can set a target of people to talk to as part of that database refresh. Add new people to the list so that you can work with fresh opportunities in fresh segments.
3. Get back into your streets and suburbs. Logically move through the local streets and the buildings to look at property ownership records and business or tenant occupies. There will be a good degree of research required as part of that strategy, but the research will help you find the right people and the right relationships to redevelop or encourage. Ask plenty of questions and observe the property precincts for opportunity. It is very important that you get out into your location when the property market has slowed or is under some form of challenge. Talk to the people, that’s the message.

In commercial real estate brokerage, the rewards of the industry are many, but so too are the challenges and the variations of business that you will strike in any year and in different precincts. Be prepared to systemize your approach as a broker or an agent when it comes to clients, properties, and territory coverage. Remain on top of your business strategies and refine and improve your market efforts where ever possible. Track your key performance indicators as part of that business focus.