How to Lease Vacant Commercial Properties Faster
To lease a vacant commercial or industrial property effectively and fast you must have a few strategic ideas and actions underway. Don’t just list the property (or vacancy) and hope that the people will call and inspect. It doesn’t really work that way today. The competition is always out there influencing tenants and moving the boundaries on leasing decisions.
Local area vacancies
The property market is awash with plenty of comparable properties and agents all pushing vacancies for lease; creativity and planning is required by leasing agents and brokers.
Incentives and lease alternatives will attract and sometimes confuse the tenants that are looking for space. Your local knowledge will help position those tenants for the lease negotiation that could arise. Have the property facts ready to quote and display. Know the ratios between vacancies, supply and demand, and lease incentives locally.
Are you a leasing specialist?
Are you a leasing agent for your location and property specialty? Then you have some strategies to develop and shape as part of finding the right tenants to fill a vacancy. Don’t just list the vacancy and hope that the tenants will call; make things happen and talk to people as part of that. Here are some ideas to help with the process:
- Research the local supply and demand factors – look for when and how the upcoming new property developments will come into the market. They will shift the balance of inquiry and the attractive asking rents with overstated incentives. Be prepared for the different ways to attract tenants, even with the other local new properties coming into the market.
- Identify all competing listings and tenancy offerings – the tenants will be looking at every variation of lease offering. They will be looking at all the local vacancies. You have to be ahead of that issue so you can have your answers and or your leasing packages tuned to the local property market and comparable alternatives.
- Condition the landlord client to the prevailing market conditions – show and tell the client exactly what is going on with the other properties locally. Information will help with client conditioning and any lease negotiations that will be happening. Provide photographs and statistics to support your facts and market stories.
- Canvass all of the local tenants within the target market – when you know all of the local tenants and businesses, you have a clear advantage in making recommendations. When a vacancy is known to be coming into the market soon, you can connect with other business owners locally to see if any are under pressures of expansion or contraction. Ask the questions; it’s that simple.
- Provide innovative market related incentives – there are many ways to structure a lease incentive. The landlord should be open to offering lease incentives to attract tenants; when the market is ‘slow’ or ‘average’ the incentives that you offer for the vacancies you are working with, will be very important. Tenants will move their attention to the best properties for the location and the best incentives that suit their business model. Help your landlord to adjust to the issues with that.
So there is some work to do here in leasing a vacant property. Preparation is the key to creating more inquiry and optimizing the lease offers that you attract. In saying that, ensure that you are getting exclusivity with your lease vacancies, and at the same time you are only working with good quality properties with realistic owners as landlords. Are you ready to lease more properties?
