“It’s a good idea. Seems obvious. So how come we hardly if ever hear any examples.”
It is the option for a place – a town or city centre – to commission its own commercial property agent to work on reducing the number of empty units it has and improving the mix of uses.
To be fair, when we’ve aired this with agents before we’ve not been met with too much enthusiasm, rather the response has been a list of reasons why it wouldn’t work.
It’d be great to hear what property and place leaders or managers think.
Here’s the rationale…
- On average (based on The Vacant Shops Academy data from locations we’re working with on tackling highstreet vacancy), more than 50 per cent of visibly vacant units don’t have an agent instructed to work on getting them let. Lots of places have a higher figure;
- There’s a lengthy list of reasons – all seemingly commercially sensible from their perspective – why a landlord might not be proactive about getting empty units a new occupier;
- If a potential tenant gets in touch with one agent they’ll typically showcase those in their portfolio but not likely many if any others, so if they’ve nothing suitable the search has to start again rather than cover all the potential options a place has;
- The fee an agent secures for a successful letting might be around 10% of the first year’s rent – for small units in some places that’s not a huge amount and so might limit the affordable effort…
…it also explains why potential pop-up occupiers say they often find little interest from landlords and agents for the idea;
- On the type of uses, the focus may be on securing a rent-paying (or business rates-covering) tenant rather than one that adds to the mix the place already has. This can mean the number of empties drops by one but residents and existing businesses might not think it’s done much to boost the place.
There’s more, but I think just these help make the case for the ‘place’ to try commissioning its own agent.
So go on. Tell me why not…?
