This marks the launch of Getting to Lease a new service-oriented commercial real estate venture in New York City. Over the past sixteen years, I have encountered many real estate professionals whose main objective was to get in and get out fast, people who want your business but who don't really think it is necessary to give good value in return. When my job was acquiring space as a tenant, I often felt short-changed by the people in whom I had placed my trust for two reasons: 1) it seemed likely that they had their own agenda that wasn't necessarily mine, and 2) they didn't take the time to learn what I really wanted and why I wanted it, and what I knew and didn't know.
I meet people all the time who have the same goals I did when I was a tenant. My goal as a broker has become to listen to what people say and glean from them what they really want and then find it for them. The purpose of Getting to Lease, both the book and the website, is to provide knowledge that will help tenants take as much control of the process as possible through the passing on of knowledge. Because the main thing that I hear people asking for is plain talk about the process and objective advice about what all the talk means. Hopefully I have succeeded here.
Even now, as I go back and read over some parts of the book that were written months ago, I think, "that could be more clearly put," and "Oh, that should have been expanded on." This blog will serve as a testing ground for additional information and hopefully to get some feedback from tenants about what else they want to learn.
Mike, January, 2014