Home / / Why you want the Team on your side?
Engaging the Team will reduce your total office occupancy cost. For a service business, office rent is typically the second biggest expense after human resources. The Team will reduce your occupancy costs in two distinct manners: First, the Team will create a competitive process among several landlords for your lease. Second, the Team will help reduce occupancy costs by helping you negotiate the ancillary costs of occupancy in addition to rent.
By creating a competitive market environment for your office lease, the Team forces landlords to reduce your overall cost of occupancy or risk not getting your lease. If there is no competition for you as a tenant, what incentive does the landlord have to be reduce your occupancy cost? If you engage the Team, the landlord no longer has absolute control of your occupancy cost; instead, the landlord will be required to meet or beat the market for your lease or risk losing your lease to another landlord.
While negotiating rental rates is an important aspect of the office tenant representation process, there are a myriad of other factors that contribute to your overall cost of occupancy, including (a) tenant incentives such as free rent, tenant improvement allowances and moving expenses and (b) additional costs such as annual rent increases, operating expense increases and amortization of the cost of tenant improvements. All of these factors impact your total cost of occupancy (i.e. the number of dollars out of your pocket in order for you to occupy your office space).
The Team’s knowledge of and experience in the Richmond office market relating to rent and the other costs of occupancy will reduce your overall cost of occupancy.
^ back to top ^ back to Main Page
To Be Your Advocate In The Commercial Leasing Process
The Team represents you and is your advocate regarding all of your space needs. The Team’s interests and yours are aligned. If you are looking for office space and call the person whose name is on a sign in front of a particular building, that person has a statutory obligation to represent the interests of the landlord. Whether the building is represented by the landlord directly or by a broker, the person whose name is on the sign is looking out for the interests of the landlord and not yours. In contrast, the Team is engaged by you, and its only obligation is to represent your interests.
^ back to top ^ back to Main Page
To Level The Knowledge And Experience Playing Fields With Landlords
Unless you are in the commercial real estate business, the landlord and his representatives will have vastly superior market information when negotiating the terms of a lease with you. For example, a suburban office tenant was offered a renewal lease rate of $19.75 per square foot. The tenant was excited about the offer, because the offered rate represented a decrease of $0.75 per square foot below its current lease rate. What the tenant did not know is that the asking rent for a new tenant in the building is $18.50 per square foot. In addition, the $18.50 rate includes some built-in margin for tenant improvements and other tenant incentives to help bring a new tenant to the building, so a new tenant’s effective cost of occupancy will be substantially less than $18.50. Commercial real estate transactions are based on current market conditions, and the Team will advise you about those conditions so that you can make an informed market-based decision in response to a landlord’s proposal.
The Team has over 40 years of combined experience in representing our clients’ interests in commercial transactions. Our experience and knowledge levels the playing field and puts you on footing equal to or superior to the landlord.
^ back to top ^ back to Main Page
To Give Your Company The Resources Of A Corporate Real Estate Department
The Team provides a single point of contact for all of your office space requirements. We operate as your outsourced corporate real estate department and are there to answer your questions relating to current market occupancy costs, audits of lease pass-through items and other lease expenses as well as short and long-term real estate strategies. Acquiring office space can be a cumbersome process, and the Team is there to act as your outsourced real estate department so that you can focus on running your business!
^ back to top ^ back to Main Page
To Give Advice On Lease Provisions That Work To Your Advantage Instead Of The Landlord’s
After the business terms are negotiated in a letter of intent or proposal, the landlord will submit a draft of a lease. The lease draft likely will include terms favorable to the landlord; for instance, a requirement for you to pay your proportionate share of building operating expense increases over an agreed base year. A landlord could tell you that the clause is its standard clause. This may be true, but the Team will negotiate for limits on the amount of any increase in building operating expenses that you must pay and for a right to audit the landlord’s calculation of the amount of any increase in operating expenses.
^ back to top ^ back to Main Page
To Give Advice On The Latest Trends In Office Space Configuration
Your office environment can be a competitive advantage or a competitive disadvantage. The Team researches the current trends and can advise you how those trends might enhance your office environment; for instance, members of the Millennial Generation typically prefer an office environment that is open and where employees are grouped into teams. One direct benefit of this type of configuration, in addition to improving your ability to recruit, is that it is more efficient which reduces your square footage and therefore your overall cost of occupancy.
^ back to top ^ back to Main Page
To Provide All Of The Above At Little Or No Cost To You
In almost every commercial lease transaction, there is a brokerage fee built-in. The fee is typically a percentage of the rent to be paid pursuant to a lease and can range from 4% to 7%. If you do not engage a tenant representative, the landlord’s broker gets the entire fee. If you do engage a tenant representative, there may be an incremental increase in the amount of the fee, and the landlord’s broker and the tenant representative split the fee. As your tenant representative, the Team will always disclose the fee we are offered. PLEASE NOTE – If at any time you are not satisfied with the services of the Team, you have the unilateral right to adjust our fee.
 |
|
