When you tour commercial real estate, you and your broker will look at many different aspects of the property. You'll pay attention to the shape of the proposed space, and you'll notice how much parking the building has. Hopefully, you'll stop in the lobby and see the buildings other amenities. However, what you see on a tour isn't always what you'll care about when you're a tenant. Here are five very important factors to consider.
Parking... All the Time
Most buildings have excellent facilities for guest parking. Once you're a tenant, though, you won't be parking there. Instead, you'll be in the regular spaces. Spend some time in the parking garage or ramp to see just how full it really is. If you can, try to visit the visit the property when it's busy. Also, talk to your commercial real estate broker to find out the property's occupancy. If it's only 80 percent full and 90 percent of the parking spaces are taken up, you know that there will be problems if the building fills up.
Sunlight
One of the biggest drivers of employee health, satisfaction and productivity is completely free. It's sunlight. Try to spend time in your proposed spaces at a few different times of the day to see how much light you get. The more light you have, the more pleasant (and productive!) your space will be. You can even use special software programs to model how the light will appear at different times of the year, helping to ensure that your space is pleasant for as much of the time as possible.
Common Area Maintenance and Quality
While your space is important, your employees and customers form their first impressions in the common areas of the space. While cutting CAM costs can be a way to reduce your commercial real estate expenditures, finding buildings with attractive and well maintained common spaces is a good way to spend your company's commercial real estate budget. Attractive spaces can help to improve your brand image as well as making your workers happier.
In addition, buildings with common area amenities can actually save you money. If you are able to find a space that can leverage common coffee shops, fitness centers or even conference rooms, you can potentially get away with taking less space and building out fewer private amenity features. Even if you have to pay a little bit more rent or are encumbered with a slightly higher load factor and CAM charge load, your commercial real estate broker can help you figure out if these extra costs pay off in the long run.
Co-Tenants
Even if everything is perfect in the building or in your space, your co-tenants can ruin things for you. Imagine having a nice quiet office and having a dental office -- with the sounds of drilling (and screaming) and the smells of dental treatments -- intruding on your space. You might also want to avoid being located next to certain types of businesses or competitors.
The Surrounding Area
Finally, a building is only as good as its surrounding environment. Good access to roads and public transportation helps to lead to happier employees while ample nearby services helps to keep your employees happy and at work for more hours of the day. At the same time, try to understand the area's demographic trends. A stable or improving area is a better bet than one that is in a state of decline, after all.
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