One of the easiest and most effective ways for a corporation to keep real estate costs low is to regularly perform Market Rate Audits on their leased locations. Often many companies get caught up in reactionary tasks such as simply handling leases as they come up for expiration, so they never get ahead of the curve with a proactive approach.

Here’s how the Market Rate Audit usually works: Whether a firm has just a handful of locations or several hundred, each lease with less than 5 years remaining in term is evaluated and compared to actual available alternative spaces in their respective markets. Rather than rely on the general occupancy and rate statistics published by the large landlord rep firms such as CBRE, JLL or C&W, this exercise involves actually identifying specific spaces that, if the lease were expiring in the next 12 months, would be feasible for a relocation.

While nobody has a crystal ball to predict what rates will be in the long term, rates for the next 18–24 months can be forecasted surprisingly well by looking at occupancy, absorption, and property under construction. Knowing existing feasible alternatives combined with construction — it takes generally 18 months or longer to get entitlements, permits, and build a new commercial facility — can give a very precise picture of what rental rates will be over the near horizon.

Many people fail to consider that leases are just like mortgages — a financing tool to occupy or control a property. And just like mortgages, when rates are low, it makes sense to restructure them and capture the lower rate. Likewise, if rates are escalating and lack of new construction would not provide additional supply — the rules of supply and demand apply here of course — it may also make sense to lock in early before rates increase further.

The benefits of a Market Rate Audit to the corporation are:

1. They become proactive to manage rental costs to take advantage of low points in the market.
2. They become aware of any significant increases — many markets have rebounded to rates above their prior peaks — so no surprises.
3. If market terms become unfavorable they have adequate time to plan alternatives such as build to suit options or even shifting facilities to other markets.
4. The audits can be done on contingency with the auditing firm only billing to the extent that savings are immediately realized.

The Market Rate Audit is a low risk, low cost, smart portfolio strategy to take a proactive approach to corporate leases.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this article, please hit that heart button below ❤ Much appreciated by me and it helps other people to see the story.