Your plans have all come together and you have invested millions of dollars into a property. The success of this venture is only as good as your ability to create value. Value is created by improving the property to generate higher rents, adding square footage, and by keeping your building leased. While we can aid in all three, we’ll focus on the bread and butter, keeping your building leased.
Tenant Type: What are the ideal tenants for the property? The highest growing office tenant category is TAMI (technology, advertising, media, and information). Do you have the budget to build out creative office improvements? Is your building higher end for professional services? Does it have zoning restrictions for Design Professionals only? What about back office, call centers or trade schools? If medical, what kind of practices would fit certain floor plates? Are their complementary uses that are not yet in the building? Are their shared services like a pharmacy onsite? If industrial, is the building a fit for manufacturing, research & development, laboratory, distribution or warehousing? Really drilling down on the right tenant profile is paramount.
Lease Type: Did you buy a building where all the tenants are on Gross leases? Should they be on NNN leases? What would it take to convert them all? How would that work? Are you providing janitorial services or are tenants providing those services themselves? Are the suites/buildings separately metered for electricity? If not, can or should they be? At what cost? How is HVAC provided to the property? What are the landlord’s responsibilities here versus the tenant’s? Are their process improvements that can be made here?
Lease Term: What is the ideal lease term? There are different schools of thought here. Some individual landlords prefer shorter leases so they minimize leasing commissions, while other individual owners prefer long-term leases and minimize cash outlay by giving free rent in lieu of tenant improvements. What should the minimum lease term be? What is the cost of re-tenanting and how does that relate to the minimum lease term? What is the maximum lease term? How does that maximum lease term related to the market cycle and your expectations of future rental rates?
Tenant Improvements: Tenant improvement allowances can be avoided, partially funded or fully funded and amortized. What rental rate, credit profile and lease term must be achieved to warrant a certain tenant improvement allowance? How much of the tenant improvement allowance be amortized and interest charged? At what rate? Are you borrowing to finance these improvements? What kind of tenant improvement allowance to you give to existing tenants during a lease renewal?
CAM Reconciliations: How are you handling CAM (common area maintenance) reconciliations? Many individual landlords miss this opportunity for added expense reimbursement. Some are unaware and some do not understand it. What is a base year? When do you give existing tenants new base years? How does that affect your properties financial statement?
We handle the leasing for dozens of landlords from the first time investor to the publically traded name brannds. Here are my Current Listings. We’re happy to discuss your needs and devise a leasing program to maximize your return on investment. You can contact Justin at jbsmith@lee-associates.com and/or 949-790-3151.
