If you’re looking for space to rent or commercial real estate to purchase there are two distinct approaches you can take. Let’s call them the Traditional Approach and the Buyer or Tenant Representation Approach.
The Traditional Approach – You basically drive around in search of For Sale or For Lease signs, check the newspapers and websites for available properties and call on all of them individually. You will discuss them with the owner or the broker, asking for information and perhaps set up time to tour these properties, one at a time on a random basis. This approach can be very time-consuming, haphazard and disjointed. To complicate things further, if you’re looking for commercial real estate The Maine Real Estate commission doesn’t allow the broker to provide you any ‘advice’ as to whether or not it’s a good fit or price for you and remember, the broker represents the Seller.
Buyer/Tenant Representation – This allows you, in fact, to hire a broker to work for you and to do the scouring of the newspapers, websites, office listings, unlisted properties, and other real estate brokers’ listings. It can provide you a single point of contact to help you work through this process, as you spend your time working on your business. Best of all, this is often at no cost to you, the exception being unlisted properties or those offered without reasonable fees. In both of those cases you would know and make any offer accordingly, so in effect it comes out of the transaction either way.
Additional benefits to Buyer/Tenant Representation are that you can have your representative take a broader view of your needs and compare one property vs. others. This is in contrast to looking at it in isolation as one property at a time that the owner or broker is currently showing you, as in the Traditional Approach.
Your representative may as ask you to look at your all-in cost, not just the obvious costs like stated rent, real estate taxes and insurance. He or she may also ask you to consider things like heat and utility costs, parking cost, traffic count, image, work place environmental concerns, commuting times, efficiencies of the layout, appropriate ‘right sizing’, compare the occupancy cost to the standards in your industry to help you determine appropriate budgets, evaluate synergies with tenant mix, anticipated useful life or future capital investments that may be needed, negotiate on your behalf the details of the deal, and the list goes on.
The difference of doing it yourself vs. with a Buyer or Tenant Rep. is similar to those who have purchased a home lately. If you engaged the services of a broker working for you, you quickly found the benefits of having that individual help you through that process and guide you to find your new home. The same is true with finding a new location for your business or investment. With representation you don’t have to go it alone you can now have a team member working for you.
So would you opt for the Traditional Approach or Buyer/Tenant Representation? The answer is often clear.
Call us any time to discuss your Commercial Real Estate and space needs. 207-774-7715