What You Will Learn in This Video:
- Start planning early: Begin the search for your business’s next commercial real estate property 2 years before your current lease expires to allow ample time for thorough planning and negotiation.
- Time is crucial: Starting early ensures you have enough time to identify your needs, find suitable properties, negotiate leases, and complete any necessary construction.
Video Transcript:
“So, how and what are your timelines on doing deals?
I like to talk to clients, begin to talk to clients about two years before their lease is up. And everybody would say, ‘Why? That seems like an awfully long time.’ And I do it for a number of reasons.
Number one, when I really start to drill down and ask questions of what their needs are going to be in the next five, seven, ten years, it creates some need for thought discussion on their part, which frankly can take six months. I mean, we want to get good information before we get in the car and go out and look for space. We don’t want to look for the wrong thing in the wrong place. That’s number one.
Number two, it takes time to go out and get people. People are running their business. Their primary function is not to go out and look at off new office space or new warehouse space. So I’ve got to get their time. We’ve got to go out. We’ve got to look for buildings. And you can’t see more than four or five buildings in a day. Things begin to blur. So we may need multiple inspection tours.
And things may come up, new availabilities may come up during the process. But first and foremost, I mean, we’ve got to identify a short list of buildings. We’ve got to negotiate with a short list of buildings. We’ve got to make a decision on which building we want to make a deal at. Get our final terms. Get our least negotiated. Plans have to be drawn. Building permits have to be done. Construction today is taking longer than it used to. Put all this stuff together.
You know, if you’re in a car 18 months before space you need your space, you’re just about at the right time. There are still supply chain issues. Things are going slower than they used to on many fronts. Lawyers are busy. Architects are busy. Construction companies are busy. You can always pause the process if you’re early. You can never make up time if you’re late.”
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