Commercial real estate brokers have many different responsibilities in connection with closing your commercial real estate transactions. Even when we’re not working specifically right now on a transaction for you, providing you with market knowledge and keeping you informed on what’s really going on can be a very important part of our relationship with you.
As an example, an owner or a tenant may still be months or years away from closing their next commercial real estate transaction, but they may still want to know what’s going on in their marketplace right now. Oftentimes people who are successful business professionals will still want to know what’s going on right now, then determine how it will impact their current situation, and how it may impact their decision making in the future, too.
So since we as commercial real estate brokers are the best resource for what’s going on in the marketplace, and what the current rates per square foot are for sales and leasing transactions, you can always contact us at anytime to obtain this information.
But when you get closer to working on your next commercial real estate transaction, getting this information now becomes even more important. You’ll want to have this information to help you to make the most informed decision possible, and you’ll want to be working along with an extremely knowledgeable commercial real estate broker, too.
One of the most important skill sets that your commercial real estate broker needs to have is the ability to interpret all of the comparable sales and leasing information, and tell you what this really means in terms of the value of the specific property. There are oftentimes many nuances that can come into play when doing this, leading brokers to sometimes wonder how appraisers ever arrived at the value that they did for a particular property. Appraisers may be certified experts with respect to the general appraisal process, but since they can easily be appraising properties that are tens or hundreds of miles apart from each other as part of their ongoing business, they’re definitely not the ultimate experts on the local market.
Your broker is really the one person that you can rely on for what values truly are right now in this current market. In addition, you’ll want to be working along with a broker who you feel certain will represent your own best interests at all times during your real estate transaction, and someone who will stand firm for you as your negotiator in the transaction. Keeping this in mind, this means that you need to be willing to have your broker tell you the truth as they see it, because once again they are the experts on what’s really going on in the market.
In addition, when they’re negotiating through another broker or principal in the transaction, your broker will oftentimes get a sense of where the pricing really needs to be in order to successfully consummate the transaction. So if this transaction is one that you really, really want, listen to what your broker is telling you. As brokers, we’ve all had many situations where our principals played hardball with the other side, they lost the transaction, and then they spent weeks or months kicking themselves for doing this afterwards.
So in summary, your broker needs to be a true professional who provides you with solid, current market information. In addition, they need to be someone who always represents your best interests at all times, and someone who does a great job of both representing you and standing firm for you during negotiations.