The New Workplace.
While this year has seen wide impacts across the globe, the changes in the office using world have been uniquely profound. As this year comes to an end, here are seven commercial real estate actions that you need to take to set yourself up for a great 2021.
1. Create Attendance and WFH Policies...
The most important thing you can do for your company's real estate starts in your Human Resources department. Figure out who will be in your spaces and how you will be scaling the number of people in those spaces up and/or down. If you're going to bring everyone back to the office in 2021, you'll probably need a lot more space. And if you're going to have mostly everyone continues to work virtually, you'll probably need less. The key is to build a vision for how your company will work when things settle down, which is likely to happen in 2021.
2. ... And Plan Based on Them
The plan that comes from your HR team is what informs your commercial real estate decision making for the rest of this year. Let me help you to know where to grow, where to shrink, and where to avoid making changes.
3. Renew that Lease NOW
You probably have a few spaces that work and that you won't be changing much (other than to potentially add to them). If you're in this boat and have limited time left on your leases, see my number or email below to contact me to reach out to your Landlord. This is a historically good time to renew. Right now, offices are sitting empty, giving landlords deep concern about the stability of their tenant base. The economy is coming off of a disastrous second quarter. And the future of work is in question. Any smart landlord would jump at just about any offer a company makes to renew and give them long-term stability of income. With this in mind,
4. Centralize Your Data
There's a reason that I will give you this guidance every year: it Works. If your company's commercial real estate data is spread out among multiple spreadsheets, file cabinets in a few different time zones, and half your team's work calendars, that is not a position to make good decisions. Entering lease abstract data, critical dates, and benchmarks into a single repository enable a company to make decisions based on how each site fits into the larger picture of your entire company's commercial real estate portfolio.
5. Gain Market Intel...
While knowing how every site in a real estate portfolio is doing is very important, it's only half the battle. Knowing that your office in Littleton costs less than the one in LoDo or RiNO is good news, but it's also important to know what that Littleton location costs relative to other offices in the Denver market.
6. For CAM (Common area maintenance) Audits
For spaces that your company will be retaining, requesting a CAM audit can be a good way to keep occupancy costs in check. However, if your CAMs are below market norms, you might not want to rock the boat. Competitive intelligence helps you build that strategy. I can help reconcile your CAM costs.
7. Landlord Conversations
Market intelligence allows a company to have discussions with Landlords about their space and any plans within the space. One of the messages of 2020 is: Everything can be negotiated as everything changes!. Knowing what is actually happening in today's market can help you to have more strategic conversations. With occupancies and rent collections down, let me help you to understand what's possible, and what you can ask for in this new world.