You may be tempted to negotiate on your own, but a landlord’s job (especially if he or she is part of a group) is to capitalize on negotiations. Terms could pop up in a lease that should be considered red flags, which you may not be familiar with. Unlike standard residential leases, each commercial lease is a set of complicated legal documents. After the lease is completed, there are several more detailed steps to complete. Inspections, insurance, and the actual move are the final main steps, but there are minor steps often overlooked that highlight the need for a broker. Finally, there are methods for getting the best deal on a renewal that can serve you down the line. Here are some examples of how an experienced commercial broker can save a client’s deal. I heard about an agent and a potential tenant who were going into a space with $30 per square foot to build out a 14,200-square- foot (SF) office. After multiple bids by construction companies, the best appraisal still ended up at $3 a SF over budget, even after previous appraisals before the lease. It was set to cost the tenant an extra $40,000 or so. Naturally, the tenant didn’t want to pay. The tenant was going to walk and blow the deal. However, the deal did give them six months of free rent, and was worth around $75,000. The broker came up with the idea of splitting that amount in half, and have the landlord cover the extra $3 per square foot. So free rent was traded for over-the-budget tenant improvement dollars (that were already allocated in the lease). The tenant and owner
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