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Traditional commercial real estate marketing seems to be experiencing erosion.

Why?

Because many of the old models don’t work well in an increasingly collaborative world where people want to have a relationship and role in the creation of their investment outcomes, that’s why.

How is your property being marketed? How quickly can you turn the message and communicate change to thousands of people in a moment of time? These are huge questions for property owners.

In the marketing of your property are you running with the big dogs or licking with the pups? How can you break from the pack in 2010 and beyond enabling you to run with the big dogs?

Meet the Puppies Lickin’ and Playin’ on the Porch

When it comes to commercial real estate marketing, there are pups on the porch lickin’ and there are big dogs in the fields runnin’.

High failure rate marketing models such as cards, letters, complicated brochures, mindless spreadsheets that don’t cut-to-the-chase, ugly property signs and costly networking meetings are increasingly being replaced with lean and quick, impactful, attention-getting, direct and digital marketing models. Interactive, please.

In today’s commercial real estate marketing game slow is bad…speed is good; actually, speed is essential. In a competitive environment, slow is costly, while speed, agility and message delivery creates economic margins and a more responsive audience.

Big, old-line marketing is expensive, complicated and difficult to control, modify and monetize; the message is mostly, non-repetitive with a single impression that yields lower results. Message renewal is necessary for property owners, but old models make its delivery expensive and its recreation clunky and difficult.

A large factor in effective marketing is the ability or inability to edit our message on the fly…THIS IS HUGE IN TODAY’S FICKLE MARKET. Minutes and hours can make the difference in deal-making. Speed counts. Reaction time is money.

Break from the Pack…Lone Wolf Marketing

Ask yourself why Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Craig’s List and Facebook have hundreds of millions of global viewers daily. Why do companies like Exxon, General Electric, Hollywood film makers, resorts, news networks and national retailers have Twitter accounts?
Continue reading “Break from the Pack Marketing Models”

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”

Like many who find themselves connected to the lifeblood of the commercial real estate market, I have been listening, researching and studying the myriad voices and have come to the conclusion that we are entering 2010 in a state of conflict.

Two camps have emerged. The first is what I will refer to as the “Disaster Camp” and the second is the “Recovery Camp.”

The Disaster Camp (DC) is the illusive analysts whose cryptic research clearly indicates we are entering an era of melt-down. The DC guys and gals come at us armed with their complex charts and narratives that prove conclusively that we are headed into doomsday.

The Recovery Camp (RC) is equally persuasive with their slick, bullet-pointed PowerPoint presentations. The RC camp trumpets phrases like “sidelined investor capital waiting to be spent” and “Bond money waiting to pounce on market opportunities.”

After all is said and done, more will have been said than done! I’m conflicted as a result of the plethora of combative voices that leave me feeling as if I have just stepped off a wild roller-coaster and cannot gain my bearings.

As we enter 2010, I’m a lot like many of my clients, nauseated and bewildered and I am vowing here and now to never ride that roller coaster again.

For at least the opening stages of 2010, I am going to go back to trusting the basic fundamentals of investment and my instincts. In the early part of 2010 I’m resolving to delete all of the emails that are in the DC and RC camp. Away with the charts and the PDFs that tell many tales.

Here is what I am going to do in 2010…return to trusting me, myself and I. Oh, I will be forced to gaze at many more PowerPoint prophets and read many more detailed documents designed to either scare me into sleeplessness or fill me with the phony messages of hope beyond reason.

My thought is that 2010 is going to be a year of disaster AND recovery. We will eat at both sides of that aweful table made up of vinegar and sugar. That is why I am going to return to trusting myself and to a healthy avoidance of investment extremism. I’m inviting you to do the same.

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Donald Teel is 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

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

Post Sponsored by Donald Teel

What is the current state of commercial property ownership, user potential, performance and values in the Prescott, Arizona area?

Where is the commercial real estate market headed in 2009 and beyond and what should property owners be doing to focus on property performance going forward?

At Arizona Commercial, we believe it is critically important for owners of commercial property within the tri-cites of Prescott, Prescott Valley and Chino Valley to consider executing a thorough “Property Performance Analysis” or PPA, based upon changes taking place in the general market but especially with respect to changes taking place in commercial mortgage lending.

The Myth of Immunity

The tri-cities commercial real estate market is not immune from the impact of the economy on property performance in larger metro markets such as Los Angeles and Phoenix.

The local commercial market is directly impacted by the strength of the general ecomomy, unemployment, housing and most importantly, lending.

The decline in residential property values, a slowdown in new construction, the reversal of commercial appreciation rates and unemployment are all contributing to changes in the performance of all segments of the commercial real estate market.

Listen to a podcast about this topic:

Property Performance Analysis

Arizona Commercial is currently engaged in conducting “Property Performance Analysis” (PPA) with commercial property owners as a FREE service designed to guage an owner’s financial objectives, the current financial performance of a property and the short and long term financing needs associated with the property.

Because we anticipate new challenges to commercial property performance as a direct result of the general conditions of the economy we think it imperative that owners assess their property performance situation sooner rather than later, and that they develop a sound financial plan going forward.”

Jim Pullaro – Broker, Arizona Commercial

Arizona Commercial’s PPA includes an assessment of and owners’s financial objectives measured against the quality of tenant mix, correct property use, lease performance, operating cost analysis, mortgage situation and estimations of user demand through 2010, with specific recommendations in each category.

Arizona Commercial’s PPA is like a property physical, in a sense. It measure the critical components related to the health of a commercial property and sets forth prognosis and treatment before problems begin.

Listen to a podcast about this topic:

Refinancing and Replacing

Commercial property owners and investors are keenly aware of the need for quality “R and R” or, refinancing and replacing. These are the two keys to perpetuating long term performance.

Lenders are currently tightening requirement for new commercial loans and refinancing. Qualification requirements are more stringent and under-performing properties or, select segments (property types) within the commercial real estate market are finding it more difficult to secure financing.

A PPA can signal issues fan owner may face before they become critical and assist with pre-planning for mortgage refinancing, property replacement or, both.

Commercial real estate investments require monitoring, adjustments and sometime immediate changes in order to keep them performing. A PPA can flag areas where an owner can and should make adjustments in order to keep performance healthy.

Until recently, many properties were performing as a result of a strong demand and easy financing. Therefore, many owners ignored or postponed the need for regular property analysis. In today’s economy there is no guarantee that a property will appreciate or perform without careful “hands-on” attention and management of the components of performance.

Listen to a podcast about this topic:

Email Donald Teel for a confidential Property Performance Analysis or, if you prefer, call him at 928.777.8100 and if you are out of state call toll free to 877.777.9100.

Here are a few facts investors can consider in refining their commercial real estate investment strategies on either the buy or sell side:

1. The deleveraging process will take more time as we work through the process of restoring sanity to private and corporate finances. We’ve lived through a period of very high leverage which must be unwound.  Habits and attitudes must change as investors take a more realistic view on risk, increase savings and reduce spending.
2. Yes, there are economic “green shoots” being seen this spring. Witness the stock market rally and an upturn in existing single-family residential (SFR) real estate sales in February. Consumer Confidence rose slightly from March to April, according to the Conference Board. SFR affordability has reached a multi-year high due to collapsed prices and interest rates at their lowest levels since about 1971. The “transition point” (the inflection point at which prices fall slower than they had been) seems to have occurred in the SFR market, so there is evidence that SFR prices will find a bottom soon.  Prices are typically at early-2004 levels or lower.

Continue reading “Is It Safe To Enter the Water?”

One square foot = 0.09290304 m2.

Okay, now what about Prescott, Arizona’s commerical market on a per square foot basis? What does it mean to owners and buyers. Is it time to buy? Is it time to sell? If so, how?

My recent suggestion to my Broker didn’t go over too well. “What we should be doing is pricing property for sellers on a ‘per square yard’ basis and for buyers on a ‘per square foot’ basis,” I said. He grimaced…I walked away.

High Value Market

We are a high value marketplace. Commericial real estate values in Central and Northern Arizona generally and in Prescott, Arizona in particular are declining creating an interesting investor market. Indeed, we appear to be nearing the bottom of the trough and it is and has been for some time…a buyer’s market.

We won’t be changing the marketing analysis to a per square yard formula but the principle behind the notion spells out the reality.

Resisting the Market Realties

Some owner’s are resisting the truth inherent in the current makret realities and in so doing they are actually capitalizing the reduction of their property value.
Continue reading “Prescott, Arizona…Per Square Foot”