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.”

Of course, like all parents, we often have to force the deal on our children, especially when it comes to property diet.

My daughter knows the limits when pushing dad around. We have long ago established the negotiating framework. She opened the shaping phase of the negotiations with “So, Dad…you said no donuts for ‘breakfast’…that means I can have one if we don’t call it ‘breakfast’…we can call it desert from last night’s dinner.”

Suddenly, I was reminded of the power of shaping the deal, rather than simply making the deal.

The negotiations were shaped and the deal finalized after a healthy breakfast of fruit, scrambled egg and one strip of bacon. On her side, she got half a donut placed in her lunch box. She got some of what she wanted…I got some of what I wanted and what I know as a parent she needs.

Shaping Deals with Adults who Fight Back

There is a big difference between negotiating and shaping a deal with a kid over whom you have parental rights and authority and squaring off with adult negotiators who fight back and refuse to be shaped.

In the commercial real estate arena the principles of shaping the deal are the same. And here they are for you master negotiators:

• Understand the financial framework of the deal; your side and the other side. Clint Eastwood once said in a movie, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
• Create points in time where you give the other side what they want. If you cannot surrender a point today, when might you and how might you at some point in the deal.
• Engage in trade-offs that are tangible and represent real concessions…people are not stupid, so be honest and don’t try to smoke and mirror the other side.
• Keep reminding yourself that you may never have another opportunity to shape the deal in front of you. In today’s complex market investors and tenants are fickle and may not return to the table.

Of course, some deals cannot be shaped. When the numbers do not work, they simply do not work, period. You cannot shape a $30 per square foot deal in a $20 market, usually.

What you can do is shape the transaction, its terms and cash flow in a number of ways to create transitional value in the down market so that in 3, 5 or 7 years your value position is closer to the desired financial end point.

Say “No” too early in the process is often going to kill the transaction for all parties. Replacing “No” with “Let’s look at this to see if we can make it work” is the first step in shaping the deal.

Shaping the deal will protract the cycle, increasing the cost of sale; time is money. There are few quick-close deals in my market. The limited deals take longer. The economy has created Principals that are decidedly more hesitant and methodical as they wind their way through the deal.

Shaping is becoming the new norm and the skill-set required is not easily found and maintained. We have been spoiled by the easy deals that were part of the 2000 to 2006 real estate boom. These are gone, perhaps for good. The bar has been raised and shaping the deal is often a more powerful skill than simply making the deal.

As capital drys up, the pace of investment slows and qualified tenant pools shrink. Engaging in the science and art of shaping the deal always made sense but now it is the critical element.

Shaping the deal is the new watershed.

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.

Gateway properties can be ideal retail property investments as alternatives to higher end, larger retail malls and prime frontage properties located in more dense retail corridors, such as West Bell Road.

Download the Sun Bell Plaza Flyer.

Local neighborhood retailers and some national brands, such as insurance companies prefer gateway properties not only for their typically more attractive pricing structures but also because they give a community an alternative retail opportunity on high traffic corridors.

However, gateway properties are not without their drawbacks; such as signage and traffic ingress and egress off main corridors like West Bell Road where the traffic moves in excess of 45 mph. Rapidly moving traffic can make access to a retail center more difficult, thus elevating the need for highly visible signage.

In the case of Sun Bell Plaza, there is a traffic light which creates a necessary stop-and-go scenario, improving exposure.

Then and Now

When Sun Bell Plaza was built West Bell Road was a sleeping two lane road connecting metro Phoenix with Sun City. That has all changed now and changes in traffic and retail density diminish the effective retail value of a gateway property and therefore, a more refined approach to marketing and leasing is called for.

Correctly positioned local tenant mix that targets residential users, competitive pricing, creative marketing and long term property value strategies can continue to make gateway retail centers valuable to local residents.

Download the Sun Bell Plaza Flyer.

While the overall commercial retail market continues to lag, gateway property owners can capitalize on this weakness by being more aggressive in competing for neighborhood tenants. Having better-than-market lease rates, incentives and a “cash flow” posture is the key to helping owners ride through this down cycle.

Sun Bell Plaza continues to perform because it is a true Gateway Retail Property with well balanced tenant mix that serves the needs of residents in Sun City, Arizona. But the surrounding market continues to redefine its place and function in the retail community.

As with all retail centers, the marketing factors that currently exist are in a constant state of flux. Redefining a gateway property’s position, retooling its performance and re-marketing it with a unique and contemporary message can be a key to success.

Download the Sun Bell Plaza Flyer.

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

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.

Before you write me off, think about it carefully. Owners have always been engaged in buying cash flow. CRE 101 is cash flow as the basis for property value. Owners have always traded space and rate for cash flow. Our problem is that we are in various stages of denial about the current cost we must pay to purchase cash flow.

As unemployment increases, consumer spending diminishes and for small and medium size investors such a climate can produce a lot of sleepless nights. As the current credit crunch begins to squeeze owner refinancing options and new lending diminishes to close to a 50 year low, we are once again going to have to buy the limited cash flow at discounted pricing in order to sustain our properties.

Let me give you an example of the battle of the bulge and the principle of buying cash flow. Let’s suppose a particular geographic market area has 1,000,000 square feet of total retail space with a current vacancy rate of 27%. Let’s introduce a tenant default rate of 12% per annum into the equation (not far off the current mark).

Finally, let’s assume a net absorption rate of 5% per annum, meaning we have 50,000 s.f. per year being leased. This equates to a sustained vacancy rate of 220,000 s.f. vacancy growing at 7% per year.

Furthermore, it means that we have less cash flow to buy, therefore the cost of the cash flow increases over time, i.e., owners pay more for each tenant’s cash flow in order to remain competitive. Bottom line, NOI drops and NOI is our commodity.

In a five-year market of the kind we are experiencing the numbers look like this:

• Year 1 end = 220,000 s.f. vacancy
• Year 2 end = 235,400 s.f. vacancy
• Year 3 end = 251,878 s.f. vacancy (we are now at 25% vacancy)
• Year 4 end = 269,509 s.f. vacancy
• Year 5 end = 288,375 s.f. vacancy

During this transition, which is exactly the type of transition we are currently experiencing, the cost for limited cash flow is increased due to the economic principle of supply and demand. We are leasing but not fast enough.

Owners ALWAYS buy cash flow, make no mistake about it. My point is that it is going to cost us more to buy the decreasing cash flow available from the decreasing tenant pool.

Fourteen dollar retail leases are becoming $10 or $11 dollar leases. We are paying $3 to $4 more per square foot to purchase the shrinking number of tenants. Tenants know this and they are not selling their cash flow easily. Like the game of golf, the lowest scores are winning.

The ugly side of this is the certainty of diminishing property values. It is a reality we are going to have to learn to live with for another 24-36 months. Those who wait too long to adjust their pricing and leasing models will certainly loose the battle for the limited tenant pool.

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.

Mind you, there is no orchestrated conspiracy here; just a glut of inventory and an every expanding population of weak tenants who think if they shake the tree hard enough fruit will fall to the ground.

Well, I am mad as hell and not going to take it anymore! I am implementing new measures to expose and terminate the pretenders…these fakes and would be tenant hypocrites who are representing themselves to my clients as so much more than they really are.

Although I am not ready to strap on a six shooter like Richard Boone did in “Have Gun Will Travel,” and ride into some western town on a mission of settling scores, I am ready for a serious revision of my qualifying language and the way I handle the “wanna be” candidate.

Sorting through Hypocrisy

Since we are using some Latin, let me throw in some Greek too. The work “hypocrite” is derived from the Greek noun “υποκριτής” meaning “one who wears two masks.” It’s the source of the theater icon that depicts “comedy and tragedy.”

I am ready to pull back a few masks and find out what is behind them. I’m ready for a lot less comedy, especially since no one is laughing. Then too, I am not especially fond of the tragedy angle either.

Masks don’t work well in the empirical world of commercial real estate. Masks are only suitable for the stage, where the emotions of an audience are supposed to be toyed with.

I’m going back to what Del Webb taught me as a highly skilled Sales Counselor…the principle of Terminatio Simulatio Velociter or, in plain English, TERMINATE THE PRETENDER QUICKLY.

You see, guys like Del Webb understood clearly the principled approach to professional representation. There are only two types of real estate investors or, in the case of Del E. Webb, home buyers; the ones that will and the ones that won’t…the ones that can and the ones that can’t…the ones that do and the ones that don’t.

Those that will are those than can and those that can are those that do. No mask, no pretense.

To the Webb organization, the deliberately implemented sorting process begins at the first business encounter (give name, get name, use name) and continues as an integral component of all the follows, culminating in securing loyalty, examination, agreement and execution.

For the foreseeable future, the market is going to continue to hammer us all, owners, tenants and brokers. Too many properties, too little time and too few truly qualified tenants and investors.

I’m going back to the principle of Terminatio Simulatio Velociter or, in plain English, TERMINATE THE PRETENDER QUICKLY.

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.

I am working with clients to help them discover and communicate the flavor and theme of a center to prospective tenants via a unique center website. Village at the Boulders is an example of a “Center Website” that communicates lifestyle and quality of tenant mix. It’s hard work to create this themematic message but the end result is an organic marketing message that can serve the leasing needs, tenant needs and of course, the pride of belonging to the mix.

For owners who have nominal number of national brands or, none at all, the concept still has credibility to the leasing and promotional effort because local strip centers that serve small businesses, pizza outlets, exercise studios, coffee shops and an ethnic restaurant can create a local lifestyle image.

The sites also serve as the focal point for Broker-to-Broker dialogue. One of the most powerful features of the “Center Website” is its “PULL” or “SEPARATION” feature. Owners are looking for ways to differentiate their properties and this is but one way to do so.

The spending habits of consumers will continue to remain in flux until we see a restoration of confidence in the economy. In the meantime, I continue to ask my Owner/Clients to look at “out-of-the-box” models that can create more leasing opportunities and a higher consumer traffic count.

In addition, larger centers NEED and SHOULD create center marketing events that can draw large number of consumers to their centers in order to provide exposure and predisposition for repeat visits.

My team at Arizona Commercial is looking at marketing models that join the “Center Website” to tenant exposure, high traffic consumer events and thus create the old fashioned “Win-Win-Win” for owners, tenants and consumers.

“DOWNLOAD THE 2009 SHOPPING HABITS REPORT” and above all, read it and find ways to recreate your marketing approach for 2010-11.

One thing that will not work is sitting still.

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.

A Second Line of Defense against Freddie the Tenant. Exceptional lease documents, drafted and designed to anticipate nightmares are the second line of defense against the Kruegers of this world. “I’m sorry,” I recently told a prospective tenant who complained about the length of the lease, “…the 28 pages of your lease are designed to anticipate just about anything and to protect you and the owner from misunderstandings.”

Bad documents seem to become “badder” (is that a word?) in the hands of a Freddie gone wild. Simplicity in the lease document can be a formula for future complexity and trouble on Elm Street.

As an investor, you don’t want to ever meet Freddie, the tenant, armed with a deficient lease document, cluttered with ambiguity. Freddie loves ambiguity!

Another thing I have learned along the highway of success and failure is that taking a strong position backed by logic, not rhetoric, is something Freddie understands.

When tenants have escalated the action, so to speak, the best position is a position of strength based upon facts, not emotional responses. Freddie loves fear…he thrives on it.

When a recently signed tenant angrily complained to me about not being able to occupy on the commencement date my response was to take a position of strength behind a quality document. My response, in part, was “…that is addressed in clear language in the lease and there is nothing I can do about that issue…” This defused a potentially volatile situation and kept the tenant from going “Krueger” on me.

Well drafted lease documents keep Freddie in place. After all, it’s much better to have a Mary Poppins than a Freddie Krueger on your hands.

When Freddie Keeps Coming Back. Like the horror flicks, Freddie never really dies and neither to tenant problems. If you have great tenants, stick around, Freddie is hiding in there somewhere, waiting for a chance to make a comeback.

To manage the potential return of Mr. Krueger, I recommend owners always use experienced property management as the front-line defense against negative tenant eruptions.

Property management is the third piece of the investment puzzle and can serve to help an owner keep his/her distance from day-to-day issues that should be handled by a Manager who knows the tenant, maintains the property and is not subject to the same emotional responses an owner may experience when faced with Freddie.

A good property management company will have its finger on the pulse of the property at all times and keep the owner informed but at a safe distance, thus increasing long term value through focused attention on the asset. Your property manager can warn you that Freddie is loose and enable you to solve issues before the slashing begins.

If you have never had a Freddie on your hands, count your blessings and be thankful this Thanksgiving Day. If you want to diminish the odds of an encounter with Mr. Krueger, use the three best tools available to you; (1) thorough screening of tenant, (2) a great lease document and (3) a property management company.

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.

Tenant Rights in Bankruptcy

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.