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When Donald Trump wrote “The Art of the Deal” he became an industry authority figure for knowing or, at least claiming to know, how to make deals…deals that work.

Has anything changed since Trump wrote his 1988 best seller? Yes, a lot has changed. The fundamentals of deal making have not changed and perhaps they never will.

Making deals is one thing…now, however, the renewed skill that is most in demand is how to shape the deals we are making.

Due to today’s unique economic times, I’m discovering there is a big difference between securing signatures and shaping a deal for long term performance.

In fact, shaping the deal may be the requisite skill now in most demand because there are fewer deals to be done and the deals that are getting done require more perseverance and targeted thinking.

Negotiating Breakfast with My Daughter

Almost every day, we are all negotiating something. I did it this morning with my 9-year-old daughter. We negotiated about her breakfast. She wanted chocolate donuts, not one, but two! Once we formulated the premise for the sign-off, i.e., what each side had to have, we then had the core of the deal.

My position was clear. “You cannot have donuts for breakfast.” Her position was, “Donuts is the only way to make this deal work.”
Continue reading “The Art of “Shaping the Deal” – Kid Style”

Bell Road in west Phoenix is one of the area’s busiest corridors. It connects traffic from the metro market and the 101 Loop to the vast retirement Mecca of Sun City, Sun City West and Sun City Grand, Arizona.

When Max Taylor and Company, LLC entered the market with its acquisition of Sun Bell Plaza, Bell Road was two lanes.

Sun Bell Plaza was the premiere gateway to Del Webb’s Sun City and there were few retail strip centers along the corridor, much less the now famed Arrowhead Mall with its renown mash-up of surrounding retail properties that make Bell Road a magnet for shoppers, Spring baseball and concert enthusiasts.

Sun Bell Plaza

Sun Bell Plaza, located at 94th Avenue and West Bell Road in Sun City, Arizona is an example of what I call a “Gateway Retail Center” as it straddles both sides of the main corridor (north and south) at the very entrance to Del Webb’s Sun City retirement community.
Continue reading “Sun Bell Plaza – Gateway Properties”

Driving gives me an opportunity to think about what I am doing, some of the challenges we are facing in the buisness and how my clients can weather what I call “The Tenant Trough.” Rather than simply tool down the long and winding road, I have decided to utilize my drive times by engaging in a little Commercial Real Estate Road Kill.

The following video was shot on a recent drive to Phoenix and is the first of what I hope will be a regular feature entitled CRE Road Kill. In this installment, I am addressing what I call the Tenant Trough, what it is the problems it creates for owners. In Part 2 I will talk about solutions…stay tuned.

Merriam-Webster defines “trough” as follows:

• a long and narrow or shallow channel or depression (as between waves);
• the minimum point of a complete cycle of a periodic function;
• the low point in a business cycle

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Donald Teel is a Senior Associate and Principal with Arizona Commercial, an Arizona commercial real estate brokerage and property management firm, headquartered in Prescott, Arizona. Need more information? Please call 1-877-777-9100 or, if you prefer, you may email Donald Teel

Want to know what I think? There is not going to be some cataclysmic, spin-on-a-dime turn-around for small and medium commercial real estate owners. This time, like no other time, we are in a long haul climb up the cliff face of mount cash-flow.

We are in a kind of real estate battle of the bulge. We have too much space (the bulge) and not enough users to quickly alleviate the bloat of vacancies. It is true, we have seen some spurts and sputters, which have caused some to optimistically think and even say, “The recession is over, we’re coming out of it.”

Everything I read, hear, view and all of my experiences at the street level are telling me the battle of the bulge is not over and the trick of trade for survivors is the ability to buy cash flow and to buy it now. Yes, you heard it correctly. Owners need to change their posture and assume a position of cash flow deal makers.
Continue reading “Battle of the Bulge – Buying Down the Bloat”

After a few years in the business, things start looking the same. Property ads read the same…photos seem similar…on and on it goes. Of late, owners have been looking for ways to make their property stand out from the crowd as unique. Here’s another very simple leasing tip for owners of just about any size property of any variety.

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Donald Teel is a Senior Associate with Arizona Commercial, an Arizona commercial brokerage and property management firm. Need more information? Please call 1-877-777-9100 or, if you prefer, you may email Donald Teel

My first Broker, the Del Webb Corporation, was big on fast failure. The principle and skill of what I now call Terminatio Simulatio Velociter was drilled into the head of each fledgling Sales Counselor whose job it was to meet, greet and qualify prospects who visited the Sales Pavilion in Sun City West.

Now, some nearly 25 years hence, I truly do recognize the importance of “sorting” and the notion of elimination has become more and more a part of representing my commercial real estate clients effectively.

Of late, and driven by market conditions, there has emerged a new brand of bottom-feeding. It’s a concept I call “LOI Shopping” or, maybe “Networking the Deal” for better terms.

There is no doubt in my mind that this carp-like behavior among prospective tenants is a product of too much inventory and the desire of often marginal tenants to continue their vain attempts to shrink or even collapse the pricing envelope.
Continue reading “Terminatio Simulatio Velociter”

Retail shopping center owners, tenants and consumers are experiencing an unprecedented economic crunch. In short, all three are drifting in the same boat.

The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), publishes a “Shopping Habits Report” in the first quarter following the end of a calendar year.

As a retail leasing specialist, I digested the entire 2009 report, subtitled, How the Recession has Impacted Consumer Shopping Habits, and discovered that indeed center owners need to be on top of the consumer game.

The “2009 Shopping Habits Report” contains invaluable information about the future consumer trends that will impact center owners, whether large or small in size.

You can read the report for yourself and draw your own conclusions. However, three things stuck out to me in the report:

• 58% of consumers believe their income will stay the same or become significantly less in 2010
• Most consumers have and will continue to throttle their discretionary spending through 2010
• Strip centers and “Lifestyle Centers” attract the highest frequency of repeat traffic

For those of you who are my clients, I want to briefly focus on the strip center/lifestyle traffic models, which run in the 70-75% repeat traffic level. In 2010 and 2011, my Company, is seizing on the concept of “life-styling” centers that have a higher than normal tenant mix by creating “Center Websites” that serve as a marketing destination point for Broker and tenant inquiries and present a center personality to the viewers.
Continue reading “Consumer Shopping Profile = New Marketing Approaches”

Owning commercial investment real estate requires a lot of hard work, discipline and knowledge in order to create a successful investment.

Tenants come in two forms, good tenants and not-so-good (okay, go ahead and say it, “bad”) tenants. There seems to be no middle ground.

Tenants are capable of odd if not bizarre behavior and often they succumb to the same economic pressures impacting owners and landlords. Pressure can create abnormal responses in any person but when those pressures find their fundamental genesis in the economy, expect surprising tenant behavior.

Stories I have heard or read about lately make some tenants sound like Freddie Krueger…a bad Nightmare on Elm Street.

How to Handle the Next Nightmare. Whether on Elm Street or a strip mall in Atlanta, if you are a commercial owner, landlord, broker or property manager, you are going to eventually meet Freddie and have a nightmare tenant on your hands.

Dealing with Mr. Krueger begins with tenant screening and qualifying. If there was ever a precept that was violated by many owners during the market run-up from 2000-2006, it was qualifying tenants.

However, even after qualifying tenants economic and other factors can erode the performance of any tenant, creating desperation and a propensity to go sideways.

Owners can reduce but not totally control the “Freddie effect” by bearing down on the up-front analysis of the tenant. Controlling a future nightmare on your street begins with qualifying the tenant but it does not end there…read on.

Continue reading “Freddie’s Back and He’s Your Tenant!”

This is a vicious market for lessees. Owners are increasingly finding their spaces going dark as the market takes a toll on Tenants and the economic performance of their businesses.

Many businesses predicate and sustain their business model on the economic relationship they have with their lease. When the line of profitability intersects the economic demands of the lease, business owners are faced with tough decisions…so, too are Owners.

Truly, a lease is a function of sound business planning and, in these days, may prove pivotal with respect to sustaining profitability. Revenue for some businesses has decline by almost 30 percent, a huge and life-threatening decline for just about any endeavor.

My Property Performance Analysis (PPA) was orignally designed to assist owners with assessing their property performance and financing options in this “vicious market” but I am extending it to a new approach that assists tenants with evaluating their lease, lease options and streamlining their lease.

The Tenant PPA looks at a number of factors from the Tenant’s side of the relationship, then seeks to formulate a strategy of lease modification that will prove accepatable to the Lessee and Lessor. Some of the components of the Tenant PPA are:

1. Financial review of business performance
2. Creation of ecomomic model for lease performance
3. Streamlining the lease to cycle through the downturn

Bottom Line. As a result of the Tenant PPA, rental rate modification may result if supported by the financial analysis. The Owner maintains leased space with creative offsets to the streamlined lease that serve as incentives against a space “going dark.” These incentives may include early renewals, extensions and rent adjustments associated with positive market and business performance improvements.

The Cost of Going Dark. Going dark is expensive. Re-letting space in a highly competitive market is costly, time consuming and almost always results in revenue decline when measured against a well drafted lease modification.

When an Owner/Tenant relationship is economically strained beyond the breaking point, our position at Arizona Commercial is a simple one, keep the lights on! In a rapidly appreciating market with vacancies below seven percent, this would not be the normal case. However, these are not normal economic times and the decision to execute a Tenant PPA may be in the best interest of the Parties.

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Donald Teel is Senior Associate with Arizona Commercial a central and northern Arizona commercial brokerage firm. Need more information call 1-877-777-9100 or, if you prefer, you may email Donald Teel

Posted by Lee Sterling – San Diego, CA

General Growth, the owner or manager of more than 200 malls in 44 states, which also owns office buildings and is involved  in the management and development of master planned communities, filed the LARGEST real estate bankruptcy in U.S.  history. So, what happens to its thousands of tenants in those malls and office buildings?

The bankruptcy code (Code) allows the debtor-in-possession (the landlord, for example) or the trustee of the bankrupt estate (hereinafter we’ll use Trustee to indicate either) to accept or reject executory contracts and unexpired leases (Sec. 365).

As a result, the Trustee will usually affirm leases that are at or above market rent and reject those that are below market rent. Of course, the lessee of a below market rent would like to make sure it continues to have the right to occupy that space, and the lessee may want to retain the space even if it’s at market rent because of significant improvements the lessee may have made or the cost of moving may be prohibitive.

Fortunately, if the lease is rejected, Section 365 provides that the lessee’s possessory rights are protected. However, the Trustee may be relieved of other provisions of the lease, such as the duty to provide services to the lessee.

What if the Trustee wants to sell the property that you have leased?Section 363 of the Code allows the Trustee to sell the real property “free and clear” of any “interest,” in the property, and a lease has been held to be an “interest.”

One case, in the Seventh Judicial Circuit, with its particular facts, has held that the right of the Trustee to sell the property free and clear of the lease under 363 of the Code trumps the rights under section 365 of the Code that gives the lessee the continued right to possession. The lessee, for some reason, had not objected to the sale; perhaps counting on the provisions of Section 365.

The lessee lost the possessory rights to a warehouse they had built on the bankrupt’s property. In the First Circuit, in a different case, where the lessee had objected to the sale, the Court held that the lessee’s right to retain possession was not trumped by Section 363! If you’d like more information, an interesting discussion of the cases can be found at: http://is.gd/u8Sm and http://is.gd/u8qA.

As soon as you hear that your landlord has filed bankruptcy or is contemplating filing bankruptcy, contact competent bankruptcy counsel!

About the Author. Lee Sterling, a guest Analyst and Author for CommercialWebPage.com, is a retired Colorado real estate lawyer. He now lives in the San Diego, California area and is a real estate Broker working with commercial tenants to help them find space, buy buildings, negotiate and renegotiate leases. He can be reached at 760-230-1492 or at Lee@LeeSterling.com.