All Important Questions to Ask Office Leasing Tenants Today

As a leasing agent you are frequently looking to lease vacant premises in an office building and CBD location.  Many enquiries and calls today will or should come to you from the marketing campaigns you create; the rates of enquiry for every high quality leasing opportunity should be tracked.

Having trouble with tenants?  Here are some comments and ideas below that I sent to our ‘Commercial Snapshot’ Online Community this week.

What’s Important with Tenants?

The important issues in capturing enquiry are in qualifying the enquiry, in understanding what tenants are looking for and when they require it.  Successful leasing agents will have a large database of well qualified tenants and business owners that they can approach when the right property comes to market.

That being  said, I have heard many leasing agents complain over the years about the problems of chasing after the specific leasing requirements of tenants only to find that the tenant has found something or will not move on an ideal property or location.  The fact of the matter is that you should only go so far in helping tenants because they are not fully committed to you; they can waste a lot of your time asking about certain properties, and at the same time be talking with many other agents.  Set the limits on just how much time you should spend on any tenant lease enquiry.

The message here is if you control the quality buildings to lease, the enquiries will very likely come to you in abundance.  Good buildings for lease will drive better rates of property enquiry.  That then makes it a lot easier for you to fill your database with the right tenants and business owners.

The tenant qualification process is quite special and direct.  Here are some of the main facts and questions to explore in finding out what the tenant needs, and to identify how genuine they are in looking for a new property to occupy:

1. Decision Maker – Understand who you are talking to and their role in looking for a new property to lease. With business type tenants it is common to see some person in middle management tasked with the process of finding properties to ‘short list’.  Ideally you want to be talking to the key person in the property decision process.
2. Essential location – Some businesses must be located in particular precincts and zones of a city. There will be reasons for those choices and points of focus.  I like to ask about ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ locations so I can create a short list of properties in each case.
3. Rental budget – The rent for a property is not just a single amount of money; added to that figure will be the outgoings and sundry charges geared to occupancy. The type of lease will dictate how the rents and outgoings will be charged and paid.
4. Improvements – The office fitout will have desirable design factors to suit the way the tenant undertakes their business, interacts with staff, and serves customers. Car parking will also have a factor of priority in final property choice.  How many car parks do they need?
5. Timing – Understand when they are looking to make the move. You can then integrate the issues of fitout construction, and the moving of the business.

Given all of these things I like to ask the tenant directly about what other properties they have already seen; it is likely that they have approached a few leasing agents already and on that basis I don’t want to waste my time in quoting things that will not suit or they have already seen.   Protect your time and focus on key questions to get directly to the tenants leasing requirements.