Commercial Real Estate for Lease

As a commercial real estate broker in Downtown LA, I talk to commercial owners and managers of property in Downtown Los Angeles all the time.  When an owner has a vacant space and wants to work with me I see my role as getting their property leased within 90 days.  If I show it to five qualified people and they do not lease, there’s something wrong funky with one of the 5 causes.  As I wrote in a previous blog entry, there’s 5 things that cause space to get leased.  The biggest one of these 5 causes for properties in gentrifying areas of Downtown LA is often not price. Typically, the issue is lack of value which relates to many things including style, safety, and simplicity.  If you own commercial real estate in Downtown LA in a transitioning/gentrifying area and you follow the recommendations in this article, you will make more money from your property than you can imagine.  Your return on investment in this market will be far better by improving value over lowering price. To recap, here’s those 5 causes that cause properties to get leased.  One, marketing exposure.  Two, time.  Three, adding value.  Four, lowering price.  And five, improving sales presentation.  For me, marketing is never the problem.  If it’s in Downtown LA I can market their property more than anyone else can in Downtown LA.  Time?  No one has time.  Sales?  Most of the time spaces lease themselves, but a sales person does make a difference, and I’m not a bad salesman.  These typically have not been an issue.  Price?  Price has not been the problem.  People in Los Angeles can afford very high rents.  The most common problem I see that keeps properties in gentrifying areas of Downtown LA from leasing is lack of value in terms of style, safety, and simplicity for potential tenants.  If you want gentrified tenants for you un-gentrified property, this is what you need to know. Business owners are looking for value!  They educate themselves.  They look around at different spaces and get a gauge on what’s available for what.  They pay attention to details and compare those details.  Also, business owners have minimal standards!  You can have a crappy building for $.25 a square foot, and still no self-respecting business owner is going to want to relocate their business there. So yes, the problem is value! Business owners care about their image just like they care about what kind of clothes they wear.  Does the property have a style that you can argue for aesthetically?  For gentrifying properties, creative companies are the most likely tenants.  Yes, people like shabby warehouses, but if they are the type that’s willing to pay $5000 a month for a creative office space or retail space in Downtown Los Angeles, they are going to need the space to be crisp, clean, and polished.  The key is to make the property stylish, make it cool, make it what business owners would want to align their image with. Safety is also a spin-off of value.  Safety is a big concern, especially for people not familiar with Downtown Los Angeles.  People that live here feel comfortable, but some people are shocked simply by homeless people asking them for money.  Shocked and afraid! People who have not lived in the Historic Core for a while and find themselves among homeless people, the drug addicted, and/or the mentally ill members of Downtown LA, often freak out. I see it all the time.  Just because you might be use to these type of people, most other people are not. Regardless, for everyone, safety is important.  When you add exterior lighting, security cameras, and a security guard the safety concern is a lot less problematic.  If people are concerned about the safety of your property, they’re probably going to drive by it or walk around there at night to ease their concerns.  If it is pitched black around your building, they obviously are not going to feel safe! Also, business owners care about amenities.  Does the space have HVAC?  Is there a conference room in the common areas?  Are the bathrooms and common areas clean?  Does the exterior of the building look well kept?  Does the lobby give a good first impression?  Often times, it doesn’t matter how cheap the space is, a lot of people simply will not rent without certain things. Last but not least, and a spin-off on value, make the move in simple.  The less the tenant has to do to make the space work for them, the better.  If it’s not move in ready, you cannot show them it does indeed work for them.  Make your property safe, don’t tell people you can.  Make it convenient, don’t tell people you can. People are untrusting these days more than ever, especially in real estate. For instance, lots of gentrifying properties don’t have central HVAC.  Well there’s good news, there’s other options for AC.  Best case scenario, buy the portable AC’s or one of the other AC options out there.  Moreover, install it for them or maintenance!  You can charge them a monthly fee, like the Spring Arts Tower does.  Show them it cools the space down. Do not tell them they can buy the AC and it will cool the space down.  They will think, “Where will I buy an AC and how will I install it?  That sounds complicated. Gosh, that’s another thing to do and worry about.  Wait a second… oh shoot I just remembered I need to go pick up my kids from school.  Crap I think I left the curling iron on!”  Show them! People do not have time or patience.  Tenants will make the easy convenient choice because they have a hundred other things on their mind.  The money you’ll save from having the space leased and not vacant will definitely make you more money than doing the opposite. The most common thing I hear from owners of properties in transitioning areas is this: It’s okay, we can do those improvements once we find a tenant. NO! You need to make your property cool, not tell people you can make it cool. Also, creative people are surprisingly uncreative at times, when looking for Downtown LA real estate.  Also, most people want to move within 30 days.  If it’s going to take you three months to get the improvements done, the “I’ll make it cool” response, makes no sense in principle!  These people will have rented somewhere else by the time the owner is done with the improvements.  Also, since these tenants shop around, why would someone lease at your property that you tell them you’ll make it cool when someone down the street has made the property cool already and they could move in now if they wanted to? So to recap Within reason, price is often not the problem Know that your tenants care about            Style: their image Safety: they don’t want to worry about their employees getting robbed      and suing them or something worse People have minimal necessities no matter how low the price is Know that your potential tenants shop around Make the move-in simple for them They have enough to worry about Make the property an easy “no-worries” choice People are not trusting.  And creative people often are not creative. Make the property cool, don’t tell people you’ll make it cool My name is Donegan McCuaig.  If you’re looking to buy, sell, lease, or manage property in Downtown LA give dtlarealestate.com a call now.  Thank you!

You've often heard "don't pay broker fees" as a gimmick that companies advertise to make you think you'll get a better deal by working with them directly. Well, there's a reason why they don't want you to use a broker, and often times it is to take advantage of you. You should have an experienced broker for office space, retail space, and any sort of commercial real estate transaction. It's especially important if you are looking to buy or sell real estate. Here's why 1. An experienced broker will know more about the market than you do Some people think they can gauge the real estate market just by going out and looking at four or five similar types of vacant spaces and get a good idea what the particular market is doing. That's only partly true, because there's a bigger picture. Appraisers are taught to estimate the value of a property by comparing similar properties. For buying, they compare recent sales, and for leasing they compare the terms and rates of what's currently vacant and for lease. In both of these cases, the information being used is not holistic and inclusive of all the possible information out there. For instance, what the trends of the moment are, and what very recent activities have taken place. If you were vacillating about whether to rent creative industrial work space at the moment or within six months less than a year ago; were aware that three major sewing manufacturing properties in Downtown were going to be converted into residential; that all their sewing tenants would be kicked out; and that those tenants would absorb most if not all the vacant industrial space for rent, you would have been wise to lock in a longer lease at a lower rate that time, than waiting another six months. If you weren't aware that these buildings were being converted, you would have used the current vacancy information to appraise the value of industrial space for lease without knowing that a lot less industrial space would be available in six months and that the rates would be going up or at least staying the same. In fact, you might have even have been pessimistic about the future rates of industrial space and signed only a one year lease. So as you can see, this is only one example of how using a comparative market analysis based on the current and past inventory, could cause you to make a poor real estate investment decision; one that an experienced broker would be far less likely to make. Basically, knowing the value of something includes knowing the most. Since an experienced broker will be aware of more factors and more current information and trends (because such information is only gathered over a long period of time), it is best to be using that broker for your real estate needs. 2. Brokers have needed experience in complex transaction situations Self explanatory. Brokers know the process of leasing and buying, what is normal, what you should look out for, how to prevent bad things from happening, and so on. 3. Brokers will likely find you space you cannot find on your own It would seem that with technology the way it is today that so much information is available online at the finger tips of buyers and sellers that a broker would be unnecessary. Not true, here's why: most of the time, brokers know of or are capable of knowing a lot more real estate opportunities than what is online. More than that, what they know that isn't online, is often times a better deal. They have expensive memberships to data-bases that you don't have at your disposal. Also, many times, really good spaces in really good locations (which is especially true for retail space) never go online at all. Brokers have relationships with a network of owners and often times these owners tell brokers about it. In fact, an owner might give a broker the listing and that broker might not even want to put it online. This is called a pocket listing. A broker first exhausts his personal network of clients (buyers and renters) before he lists it online. Why? Because brokers can make more money that way: in fact, he or she would typically make twice as much money by not putting it online, because he or she won't have to share the commission with the tenant or buyer's broker. That should be a powerful reason for you to invest yourself in the services of a broker. In other words, often times, what is put online is the stuff left over that brokers weren't able to lease or sell on their own. Why weren't they able to lease or sell them? In other words, what is wrong with the space now that it's put online? That's a powerfully good question. You can see now that the prime commercial real estate spaces typically aren't put online, and when they go online and they're a good deal the get bought or rented quickly. And you might not be aware that the space is a good deal and vacillate on it for a while, and it gets rented or bought out from under you. That is a bad experience you wouldn't want to have, and you can prevent it by working with brokers. 4. Brokers can be an important figure in your networking strategy for your business If your business benefits from networking with other business owners, the person that finds business owners a space to operate their business is a good person for you to know. He or she can give you referrals for your business, or possibly refer you to a trusted associates that can benefit you. 5. Brokers can prevent you from making mistakes See 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7. 6. Typically, brokers can negotiate more creatively Possible concessions are not always obvious, in the mind of the lessee/buyer or the lessor/seller. A broker is there to facilitate the transaction between these groups in a way that will satisfy both parties. Each party to a transaction is invested in a deal in a different way, and therefore they do not always see potential mutual benefits. Who would be a better person to help you find common ground, than a person who does it every day for a living? 7. Brokers are invested in your happiness and success As a renter, brokers want your business to succeed because it makes them look bad to the owner if you fail. When you are not able to pay your rent or fulfill your lease obligations the owner or manager of the building associates that negatively with the broker who brought you to the building. What does that mean? If you fail it harms the relationship between the broker and the owner. So, literally, the broker's business is hurt if you do not succeed. As a renter or a buyer, commercial real estate brokers want your business to succeed as well; not only that, they want you to have, at the very minimum, a reasonable deal. They know that you will tell everyone you know about your experience and what kind of deal you got. In other words, if they give you a bad deal they know you are going to talk badly about them to everyone you know. A professional real estate consultant is there to make a reputation for himself, long term. He or she has a lot to lose by your business failing or you not being happy with your deal. CONCLUSION: You should have a commercial real estate broker. It is like having an insurance policy. It's not required but it's smart. As always, if you need help renting office space or retail space in Downtown Los Angeles give us a call (213) 304-4727!