Why You Should Pull Apart Your Commercial Property Market and How to Do It

You should regularly pull apart your commercial and retail property market to find the advantages and changes that lead to sales and leasing listings.  There are always things happening, and your focus on that will help you build a ‘results record and pipeline of new business’.

Commercial real estate brokerage is a personal system; you must keep yourself on track with activity and investigation.  It is a daily process.  Top agents adopt methods like this.

You could call this a ‘full property market review’, and it is a valuable process to adopt.  You will find things and see where changes are evolving.  It is wise to do this ‘analysis’ on a monthly basis as it takes a good few hours.   Each monthly review is an update on the last investigation.  Soon you will have a ‘plan of change’ when it comes to local property activity.

How Do You Dig Deeper in Property Activity?

When you are digging into the local area and investments for property opportunity, where should you look, and what do you look for?  These ideas will help you get started:

1. Discover the enquiry types and frequency – Where is the property enquiry coming from today, and what are people looking for when it comes to properties, investments, and premises? Track the property enquiry, so you can determine and build a set of trends and charts to support that.  Charts like that will also help your listing pitch with clients and customers.  You will stand out as the ‘agent in control’ when it comes to a competitive listing pitch.
2. Track down the zoning changes in the locality – These zoning and property use changes will be the base of new projects and property change. There will be renovations, a material changes of use, and expansion projects evolving from that change.  So, where are those areas of change in your location?  Dig into the records and recent development applications.  Get to know who the people are that seem to be behind the property changes and applications for development.
3. Pinpoint the better buildings and precincts – This is always a valuable process. Keep your attention on the buildings and locations where people like to occupy or purchase premises.  Establish a group of 25 buildings that can remain at the centre of your property attention throughout the year.  Get to know the occupants and business owners in each case.  Connect with them through direct and ongoing contact.
4. Classify the local businesses into primary and secondary focus – From the previous point, it is valuable to split the local businesses up into two separate groups. The ‘primary’ group will be the local businesses that you believe will be good sources of premises and property activity.  Ensure those businesses are successful and dominant by business type in their market segments.  Understand and identify the key people that are running those businesses; perhaps they also own other properties in the location.  Conversations and ongoing ownership investigations will help you find the right people and properties for your primary and secondary segmented groups.  It directly follows that the secondary groups of companies and businesses are those that you will monitor, but not as intensely as those in your primary segmented companies.
5. Detect the existing listings and the price and rent structures in the zone and by property type – That information will give you ‘leverage’ with property owners as you pitch and connect with them for new listings. From that point, you can also establish a marketing solution that works for local property sales and leasing.  Each listing can then have a story and a strategy that you can adopt in connecting the client to your property ideas.

So, these things will help you pull apart your property market and then find the people and the properties that can be the source of your next property listings. Diligence in observation and process will help you achieve results and momentum as an agent or broker.  Track your progress and conversations in every respect.