As a commercial real estate investor, keeping your properties filled is a priority. You need the rental income to cover property taxes and expenses. Plus, owning these spaces contributes to your city's culture and business community.
You can't achieve the above points without smart lease management. This process starts with the right services.
Rather than working with multiple services, from handymen to lawyers, you can partner with a property management company that offers a full range of services.
In this guide, you'll learn how to leverage different types of property management services to manage your commercial real estate portfolio.
Tips For Managing Commercial Leases
First, you need a solid leasing contract. This contract should clearly define the terms of your lease, from monthly payments to pet deposits. You must state the beginning and end dates of the lease, as well.
Always have a lawyer present when drafting up a lease. It is a legal document after all. You must include legalese language to enforce standards like noise levels, property damage regulations, and rental payments.
Make this leasing contract available in your commercial tenants' online portals for easy access. Consider allowing out-of-state leaseholders to sign contracts with digital signatures to widen your prospective tenant pool.
Work with your lawyer to create the ideal contract for your lease renewal strategy. Lease renewals are critical for increasing your ROI on tenant procurement services. Consider incentives like commercial kitchen upgrades, discounted rental rates, and lower deposit amounts.
Property Management Tools for Maintenance
Excellent maintenance is necessary to attract and retain leaseholders. You can't market a property to leads with lackluster real estate photos.
Your property manager should oversee the following:
- Property upkeep
- Rental repairs
- Commercial upgrades
- Business curb appeal
Being diligent about the above points will ensure stunning marketing media. Real estate marketing also includes viewing that requires commercial staging. Many prospective tenants are willing to sign leases on the spot if they're eligible and passed their tenant screening.
Responsive and effective maintenance is a huge draw for future tenants. Without it, you'll drive away great tenants, forcing you to spend more money on property marketing and tenant procurement.
Make it easier on your tenants by integrating a maintenance request portal into your website. Fortunately, you don't even have to worry about building a website if you work with a property management company. For example, PMI West Suburban offers a maintenance portal to tenants for 24-hour service requests.
Service requests also include new commercial appliances, lighting, and countertops.
Tenant Screening in Lease Management
You should always factor tenant screening into your lease management strategy. This step will ensure that your lease is being understood and followed to the letter. It will also save you the cost of late rent payments, safety hazards, and complaints from residents.
Commercial tenant screening must include rigorous financial screening. Review business bank statements, past commercial rental history, and other assets. You can even look at past customer reviews to get a feel for how a prospective tenant runs their business.
Optimize Your Lease Strategy
Take the above tips to optimize your lease management protocol moving forward. Start by hiring a property management company with the legal, marketing, maintenance, and screening expertise to streamline leases and renewals.
At PMI West Suburban, we're passionate about increasing the value of your commercial property. This philosophy includes a management model that generates lease renewals.
Contact us today for more information about our services.
