When you, as a real estate agent, lease a commercial property today, it is very important to ensure that you have the right tenant for the property that you can successfully negotiate for the duration of the lease. If you also have other tenants in the property, there will be tenant mix issues to consider.
Let’s face the facts of today’s real estate market; there are plenty of openings to fill, so any way you can specialize the process and get to the key details the better. Renters and landlords will not always give you all the information on the first request.
To qualify a tenant for a potential lease negotiation on any property, there are some standard questions you can incorporate into a checklist. To get it right, you can have a checklist for each property type (office, industrial, and commercial), so your inquiry and qualification process is quite specific and relevant.
Here are some important facts to keep in mind when you want to qualify a potential tenant to lease your vacant property:
- Who are the tenants you are talking to and where do they come from? Who is the decision maker to talk to in the leasing process? Make sure you are talking to the right person.
- Ask them to outline exactly what they are looking for in a property.
- What access do they need to transport routes or ports? Will they need to access major thoroughfares with heavy or large vehicles?
- Will they want special areas on the site to be used, such as ‘hard stands’, parking lots or loading facilities? If they do, make sure you understand how and why.
- Ask them to tell you what to avoid when moving to another property. They move from another property, so something is the catalyst for the move; Find out what it is.
- What location is ideal or suitable for them and why? This will help reduce the inspections you carry out.
- How long will they need to occupy the new premises and will they want a renovation option?
- What size property will meet your relocation or rental needs? Divide the size into special areas, such as office space, warehouse, lobbies, storage, parking lots, common areas, and retail space.
- Which property improvements are essential versus which are good ideas if available?
- What rent can they pay? What is your rental budget? As part of that process, ask about their ability to pay for extras like property expenses and recoverable charges.
- What is the timing of your move to the property’s new location? It may be that the timing does not suit some of the properties that you can show them.
- How did they get to you and inquire about the property? Did they see a sign or come to you from an advertisement (if so what)?
- Will they need to expand or contract at a later stage in the lease occupancy?
- What is your main type of business, and from there, what special needs do you have, such as delivery, storage, car parking, customer or customer access, and transportation?
- What numbers of personnel are involved in the business function? You will need to know this to determine how the property can serve the occupants (restrooms, car parking, common areas, etc.).
- Are they coming to you from another property? It could be that some relocation pressures apply here with the end of another lease.
So these questions will get your checklist started. When you use focused questions like this, you can get to the facts and prepare your efforts to direct them to the right property in the most efficient way.