Commercial Real Estate Agent Leasing Tips and Strategies

The leasing segment of the commercial real estate market is particularly specialized.  Many agents choose only to work on leasing opportunities within their property specialty.  That being said, if property leasing is your primary source of real estate income, then you need to consider the quality of property that you work on and the clients that you serve.  Low quality listings can be huge amount of work for very little personal outcome or commission.  Choose your listings well.  Don’t let low quality listings drain your resources and time.

Vacancies in good properties will always attract enquiry.  Poor quality properties and vacancies achieve lesser enquiry; that will drag down the inbound enquiry and the achieved rental rate.  The net result will be lower commissions.  So you need to be selective on the properties and the premises that you work with from a leasing perspective.

So the first priority here is that you should focus on the servicing of good clients and good properties in the market.  Research the local area to understand exactly where these clients and properties are located.  Put them at the center of your prospecting processes.

It can take time to build the necessary relationships with the appropriate and the best landlords.  To make the matter a little bit easier, build an extensive database of business tenants through the region.  In that way you improve your value to the landlords that you serve.  Soon they will know that you have the necessary tenant contacts and leasing opportunities that they need.

Here are some essential things to do every day as part of specializing in property leasing services:

1. As a general priority, focus on achieving exclusive listing appointments with the landlords and the vacancies that you service.  In this way you can control your market.  An openly listed vacancy will give you little opportunity to grow market share, and if you achieve a leasing result it will be by luck more than process.
2. The first thing that you should do every day would be in telephone prospecting and cold calling.  Given that you work with business type tenants, most of your prospecting can occur between 8.00 AM and 10.00 AM.  Most of the businesses in your local area will be operational in that time.  Your focus should be to talk to the business proprietors and to understand their leasing and occupancy needs.  So the prospecting call is a questioning process a rather than a sales pitch.  Seek to understand the tenant’s needs and upcoming leasing issues.
3. Build a significant database as a result of your prospecting activity.  That database should be split into tenants of different business types and locations.  The tenant database should be separate to the landlord database; it should also be a lot larger.  One of the factors of attraction when it comes to pitching your services to a landlord will be that of your database size and its relevance to the property type.  For this reason, ensure that your database is comprehensive, large, and totally up to date.  It is difficult for a landlord to ignore an agent that has total control and awareness over tenant movement in the local property market.
4. Stay in contact with all of your clients and most particularly those with an exclusive listing.  Keep them advised of the changes to the local property market when it comes to supply and demand for leased space.  Watch out for the new property developments that could impact market rentals, lease incentives, and occupancy rates.
5. Check out the listings that are still on the market and those that are new to your property segment.  Wherever possible, identify the resultant lease terms and conditions relating to any finalize lease deal.  There will always be a difference between an asking rent and an achieved market rental.
6. Make sure that your current lease deals are progressing based on the terms of the lease agreement and or current negotiations.  Every lease transaction should be supported by valid market rental, guarantees, accurate and legal documentation, and suitable deposits.  Stay on top of your current agreements and the parties to the negotiations.  Make sure that your lease negotiations are not stalling for any reason.

A leasing agent is always closely watching the activities of tenants and landlords in the local area.  You can add to this list above by understanding the greater property opportunity locally and the good clients that you are targeting.  Set some rules and start prospecting.

You can get more tips like this at our main commercial real estate training website.