Besides claiming that you are a young, growing, and cash strapped business that the landlord should help out of the goodness of his heart, I always found a few methods helpful.

1. The first one was to discuss the other spaces you are looking at using the real financial terms with the broker and or the landlord. Once they realize you might go elsewhere, they usually will attempt to cut to the chase and put their best foot forward.

2. The next technique is to attempt to phase your growth into the space. For example if the space is 2,500 square feet, you begin with the justification that you need 1,500 square feet now, but will need the 2,500 square feet a year from now. If you are signing a 3-5 year lease, the landlord should be willing to let you pay as you go which will strongly help the economics of what you are trying to accomplish.

3. Negotiate the rent as far as the landlord will move and then move on to concessions like free rent or tenant improvements.

I’m sure most people are already using something like Google Reader to track their favorite blog feeds.  If you’re not the I suggest you give it a try, especially if you read a few blogs.  We’re hoping that the Rofo Space Need Feed gives you one more reason to start tracking feeds.

When businesses are searching for commercial space they come to Rofo and post exactly what kind of commercial space they are looking for.  Then landlords and brokers make proposals and the tenant accepts what they like. The Rofo Space Need Feed tracks all these space needs and allows you to subscribe to feeds in different areas.  After subscribing, your reader will show an update every time a new Space Need is posted.

The Space Need Feeds cover the main regions in California where Rofo receives a substantial amount of space needs.  We will be rolling out feeds in new cities when we start to see more getting posted.  Here is a list of the feeds we have rolled out:

San Diego Area Commercial Space Needs

Los Angeles Area Commercial Space Needs

South Bay Commercial Space Needs (San Jose, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Sunnyvale etc.)

Sacramento Area Commercial Space Needs

Peninsula Commercial Space Needs (Palo Alto, San Mateo, Redwood City etc.)

Orange County Commercial Space Needs

North Bay Commercial Space Needs (Santa Rosa, Petaluma, San Rafael etc.)

East Bay Commercial Space Needs (Oakland, Berkeley, Walnut Creek, Fremont etc.)

So subscribe today and easily stay up to date with the market.  We’ll be rolling out new feeds in the future if your area isn’t up there yet.

You mean to tell me it’s not just Location, Location, Location?

Below we will reflect on how most companies make the decision about where to locate the office.

1. Location, Location, Location: Not only a real estate adage, but a fact of life. The location of the office is usually described as the either the biggest benefit or biggest negative.
2. Commute Patterns: Take a preliminary survey of your companies thoughts on their current commutes and use Rofo’s tool to determine how the new office location might effect their commute pattern.

3. Amenities: What restaurants and coffee shops are available nearby? Being in an isolated office park can be a very bad situation for the comfort of employees. At times in cannot be helped, but being in close proximity to the amenities employees use during their lunch break can be a huge recruiting advantage. Please see our Rofo Amenities tool to look for nearby amenities as you search for space.

4. Safety: What is the neighborhood like late in the evening? Have there been office or car break ins in the neighborhood recently? Would a female employee feel comfortable walking to their car or public transportation after working late on a project? All of these issues should be considered when considering your next location.

5. Layout of the Space: Is the layout of the space desirable. Is there good separation between the lobby and the work space? Is there separation between the kitchen and the work space so food smells don’t permeate the office. Is there good natural light?
6. Image of the Building: The question depends on how you are trying to present yourself to your clients and potential employees. If you are a law firm that helps with class action suits, it might not make sense to have the top floor of the nicest building in town. If you are the high powered corporate firm, it might be absolutely necessary to display that image. The location, layout, and feel of your building and space will leave an impression on your visitors and should be considered in your decision making process.
7. Parking/Public Transportation: The proximity to public transportation and affordable and convenient parking are extremely important. Many of your key employees might need quick access to transportation as they visit clients while others need convenient and affordable ways to get to the office. The more transportation options the better.
8. Recruiting: Will your location and building aid or hamper you in your recruiting efforts for top talent. How will the location effect current employees?
9. Expansion: Will your location allow for easy expansion? Is there space available nearby that can work if there is not space within your building?
10. Building Ownership & Maintenance: Is the ownership local? Is the HVAC system consistently broken? Your landlords involvement and attitude and responsiveness towards tenant repairs should be a critical element of your building decision.

Owners rep and property manager Micah of Metrovation in San Francisco sits down with Rofo and explains why he uses the site to list commercial space online.

What Micah likes about Rofo is that it produces quality tenant leads and is a great platform for listing spaces and connecting with prospective tenants online.

Interview
I’m Micah Bycel, I work for Metrovation. I’m an owners rep and property manager.

Is Rofo a good marketing tool?

Yeah, Rofos been great. It’s given us an ability to outsource part of our obligation in terms of getting our listings out to the world. We’ve found Rofo to be extremely reliable in putting our listings out there.

Does rofo generate quality leads?

Yeah, I think the first three leads we got, two of the three closed deals with us.

Is Rofo.com easy to use?

Absolutely, I mean the interface is really easy to use, so uploading the listings and everything is really easy and then its sort of taken over from there which is great. So, in terms of how it works in the deal, we’ve found it to be very clear and easy.

Does the Rofo craigslist flyer work well?

Yeah, I mean I think Rofo does a good job of walking that line between too fancy and you know, just sort of random text in craigslist. And so I think it presents a presentable flyer, but that doesn’t overload you with information that people don’t care about, and makes it very easy to read.

The future of commercial leasing?

Yeah, I think the commercial real estate world in general has been slow on the uptake in terms of technology changes. I think Rofo is probably at the forefront of it, we’ve been posting on craigslist for a long time, but I think what we’re doing now with Rofo in our overall strategy is sort of figuring out where are the leads going to come from. For example, is Rofo going to take care of internet leads, and the brokers will take care of leads from the brokerage community. I guess the short answer is I still think its just all getting sorted our right now.

Would you recommend Rofo?

Yeah, definitely. We’re using it as part of our platform to get our listings out. We still rely primarily on our brokers to list a space, to get it out in the brokerage community, to do tours and to bring us deals. But, we’ve found Rofo to be a really reliable component to our leasing strategy.

Retail is a tough space to be right now. In the past year the sector was hammered by the down economy, leaving many retail commercial spaces vacant. With all this prime window space available there have been some creative ideas on what to do with it.

One that is catching on is placing advertising in vacant storefronts. This helps generate revenue from a vacant space to offset rent that isn’t being collected. It produces a strange phenomenon with the survivors of the downturn plastering their wares all over the remains of the fallen. According to this New York Times article, it costs about $500 a month to rent a storefront for advertising purposes. That being quite a deal since a comparable billboard in some urban markets can cost as much as $50,000.

If a store owner can’t find an advertiser to lease their window, there are throngs of artists waiting to populate it with their work. In San Francisco, there has been a recent push to revitalize the downtown thoroughfare of Market St. with creative ideas such as art in store fronts, reduced traffic and more space for pedestrians and bicycles. BetterMarketStreet.org is chronicling the attmpted transformation.

Mistletoe on Powell Street from ISHOTHIM on Vimeo.

One feature on the Rofo site that is incredibly useful to both prospective tenants and space providers is the Space Needs section. It allows businesses looking for space to post their exact requirements, i.e. space size, what city, preferred move date, company type and other requirements.

For busy small businesses owners, this allows them to save time by posting their need and then accepting or rejecting the offers they receive. It reduces the time a small business owner has to spend searching for space.

For space providers, the system provides an easy way to connect with potential tenants. The process for proposing a space is quick and painless and you will be notified via email when the tenant accepts or rejects the proposal. When proposing a space it is best to be mindful of the tenants needs and not propose a space in a city miles from where they are looking. Space providers also can sign up for “Space Needs Alerts”, which notify them through email when a Rofo user has posted a space need similar to a vacant space they have listed.

Local Oakland building owner Norman Eggen describes his success using Rofo to lease commercial space. After listings his spaces on Rofo, Norm began to receive quality tenant inquiries and was able to fill half his building with Rofo users. Norm specifically like that Rofo helps fill a niche for marketing smalls spaces. The problem that Norm has witnessed is that brokers sometimes avoid working on small deals, so Rofo is a great platform to get small commercial spaces leased.

Interview
I’m Norm Eggen, I’m the owner along with my wife of this building at 4721 Tidewater Ave. in Oakland. The reason I’m doing this for Rofo, they’ve been instrumental in helping me find fifty percent of the last tenants I’ve had for the park. They’ve been providing a good service to me to me at what I figure is relatively cost effective basis. And they have brought tow tenants who are right now in the process of finishing up their tenant improvements.

How does Rofo compare to other online resources

Well, one thing I probably should say, and could say for your benefit is the other servives I’ve gotten zero prospects out of it, and the prospects have come from [Rofo]. Brokers working in this area don’t like to work on smaller tenants like this, so Rofo fills a gap to help bring in tenants in the smaller end of the user spectrum.

Would you recommend Rofo?

Yeah, I can strongly say that I would recommend Rofo to other people that have similar types of space they want to lease, or perhaps sell and in fact I have recommended them to more than one other building owner already, so it’s a good service.

At Rofo we track the number of searches performed on the site.  These graphs represent the number of searches made per month by Rofo users for 126 cities in the 5 major Bay Area regions, East Bay, South Bay, Peninsula, San Francisco and North Bay.  Commercial space search volume helps give an insight into small-business health and formation in the Bay Area.  The majority of these searches are for spaces under 5000 sf and includes office, R&D, industrial, warehouse and retail space searches.

The East Bay is a largest region and receives the most searches on Rofo.  The cities range from Oakland, west to Antioch and south to Fremont and everything in between.  The south bay comes in second in search volume and includes cities like San Jose, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale.  The Peninsula, San Franciso and North Bay regions all have similar search volumes that average around 5000 and under per month.

The first general trend is a slight spike in volume for all regions in March 2009.  It seems that the pent up demand accrued during the worst parts of the financial crisis in the latter parts of 2008 and early 2009.  In March 2009, when businesses realized that the financial system was not going to implode they began to search for space again, leading to a slightly higher search volume.  However after the March spike search volumes declined in each region until August.  Search volumes have remained fairly stable through 2009, but definitely have not increased.

Obviously any kind economic recovery, which depends heavily on the ability for small businesses to grow and establish themselves, hasn’t quite taken root yet, or at least isn’t reflected in Rofo’s search data.  If a recovery does begin, it would be reasonable to see an increase in businesses searching for space, either to expand or start up.  Unfortunately we haven’t seen evidence of that quite yet.

It can be difficult to know exactly what information to include in your available listing, but we thought we would share some tips. Our customer service team spoke to nearly 1,000 small businesses in October who were searching for space and we thought we would provide some real time feedback for the best way to market available space to these businesses. Below are some tips:

 

·      Price: Absolutely, 100%, every time, price your listing every where on line. The small business understands that if they ask for improvements, the price might increase. If you want to get qualified inquiries and more inquiries, price your listing. The theory that you might get a business to tour by un-pricing a listing and then they will fall in love with the space regardless of the price does not work!

·      Square Footage: List each square footage that you have vacant separately so businesses with specific needs can find your available space. If you have a space that is 3,000 square feet but is divisible, list each square footage that it is divisible to.

·      Pictures: Interior and Exterior and the more the merrier.

·      Floor plans: For both office and industrial users, a floor plan is requested very frequently. If you don’t have a floor plan, describe the layout in the description

·      Description: In the description, discuss the positives of the space and the location. Discuss nearby amenities and companies in your building. Call out specific business types that would be a good fit for the space or who have leased the space in the past. If the building is a great fit for therapists of a gym, add that to the description.

·      Video: There aren’t that common yet in commercial real estate, but more and more businesses are viewing videos already on Rofo.com. It saves everyone time and makes a space stand out. If the space is run down, show it describe the improvements that you would be willing to do. If the space looks great, show it off and help it lease quicker.

·      Reviews: Have your tenants review what its like to be a tenant in your building. Small businesses like to hear from other small businesses and this advice has been consistently asked for by our audience.

What’s the market doing?

Where do you think we should price this availability?

These are examples of questions the Customer Service team at Rofo hear every day. We thought it might be helpful to put our tips down on paper to help provide a process for pricing your vacant space. Below are some steps and questions to ask yourself:

Step 1: Get some rough comparables: Start by searching Rofo, brokerage websites, Craigslist and any site you run into on the web for rent pricing in your city and better yet your neighborhood. Check out For Lease signs in windows near your office, warehouse, or storefront and figure out where they have priced their space. Try to get at least 5 to 10 data points and figure out roughly where your space fits from a quality perspective (low end, mid, high end).

Step 2: Decide where you want to fit in the market

You’ve got some time: If you have some time and just want to get the best deal possible, price your building towards the expensive side of the market and see what happens. If interest is tepid, try offering some moving concessions such as free rent or discounted move in costs. Wait until your patience is wearing thin and start adjusting the price towards to medium or low end of the price scale to lease it

You’re in a hurry: Look for the best comparable property from your search in Step 1 and price your space at a 10% discount. Market the property across the web and make sure you are as flexible as possible on terms. Offer commissions, free rent, or any other concessions that you commonly see in your online search.

Step 3: Test it!:  Now that you have priced the listing, start to aggressively market the space and see what happens. Network like crazy, test different advertising mediums, and see what drives the most phone calls and appointments. If you are getting a large volume of tours but not getting a lease signed, its time to lower the price.

Step 4: Analyze: If lowering the price is not working, its time to analyze if its the space/price or the market. Rofo can help provide search data for your area if that’s helpful which is a great indicator of small business demand.  If its price issue, lower the price until it leases (and you are still making some money). If its a market issue, think about creative ways to get short term tenants into your space to gather some revenue. Would someone store something in your space for a few months? Is there an event that desperately needs a location and will pay for a few weeks to rent your space? Is there a non profit that can get you a tax refund for renting to them rent free for a few months?

Hopefully some of these tips help you decide where to price your available space.