city buildings on Hong Kong harbour

Leasing Commercial Property Guide for Brokers and Agents

The leasing process in commercial real estate is simple and easy.  Vacancies exist in your location, and those vacancies can be a focus of your prospecting and marketing.  There are landlords that need your help with solving those vacancies.  There are tenants that require relocating.  Your job is to match those people into properties and situations.  Are you ready for the challenge?

Here is a fact to remember as you proceed.  A landlord with property vacancies is a motivated person; they will talk about their property and connect with you.  If you are a leasing agent, keep a close focus on vacant properties and potential vacancies coming up; talk to the landlords in the location and those that own the target properties.  Older redundant properties are also part of that review process.

 

Work Your Database List

 

The ‘trick’ here to the leasing process is to know and remember that your tenant database is quite valuable in directly marketing your services and leasing solutions to landlords and tenants.  Grow your database and then market your services around that.

Know who your clients and prospects are and then work the list and the groups in your location.   If your database is up to date and of reasonable size, then it is likely to be something worth talking about in any client conversation and presentation. 

The ‘take away’ point here is that each day you can and should be talking to more tenants locally, and then tracking their premises needs in a good database software program.  As a leading expert in property leasing, you must know about tenants vacating, moving, expanding, and contracting.  Cold calls and questions lead to listing and leasing opportunities.

So, what do you need to watch from a leasing and business perspective in your location?

 

  1. Vacant Areas – track the vacancy factors in your location. Where are the vacancies by building and by category?  You will see trends and preferences that tenants have when it comes to precincts and buildings.
  2. Rental levels – split all your rental details up into rent types and locations. Look at the variables with gross and net rents and include in that analysis the review of incentive levels. Patterns will be identifiable with local area rents and building types.  The age of a property will also place pressures on a rental assessment.
  3. Location – some precincts are quite popular with businesses and tenants. On that basis, the vacancies are likely to be taken up quickly, and the rents in the zone or precinct are usually higher than in other zones.  Watch the trends in rents and future supply.
  4. Improvements – the older buildings in your location may be suffering a higher vacancy rate due to the expectations of tenants and businesses. Property improvements and levels of presentation are critical to attracting new tenants to a property.
  5. Services and amenities – from the previous point, the services in a property are critical to tenant attraction and creating inspections. When you look at any property vacancy, consider the levels and variety of services that could suit the occupants; consider the ‘attraction factor’.  The important question to ask here is if the property and the vacancies are comparable and of better quality than the other properties in the location.
  6. Tenancy mix – when you look at an office or retail building with multiple tenants in occupation, consider the tenant mix and the placement of tenants. You can segment the tenants by business type, leases covenants, size of premises, the location of premises, lease expiry, and business operation.  Some tenants place considerable impact on a property with issues such as staff, customers, waste, and business operations.  As part of that review, look at the leases of anchor or larger tenants and see how those leases can have an impact on your other tenants.

So, there are things that you can do here with the gathering and the considering of facts in the commercial and retail property leasing process.  When you know the simple and direct leasing facts, you can do something for the tenants or landlords that you would regard as clients.

Get Free Agent Resources Here....

* indicates required
Email Format

Similar Posts