How to Negotiate a Better Commercial Lease (Tenant Rep Playbook)

0:00 A lot of companies don't even understand like why would I bring a tenant Rep into a deal? It makes no sense, right? I can just do the deal directly and we're having to convince groups, hey, you're not getting a good deal going directly. And that's where we come into play. Not only we'll get paid a Commission, but we'll actually lower your rent. We'll actually get you concessions by going into the market and getting proposals even if you're going to renew. So I just think it's kind of like one of those things that just people don't think about. What matters most is making sure someone's representing your interests and every single deal and not aligned with the landlord side. This week on Commercial real Estate Secrets we have Brandon Glick.

0:40 Brandon is a commercial real estate broker out of Chicago with more partners. Brandon, thank you being for being on Commercial Real Estate Secrets today. Thank you for having me of you happy to be on. You know, for the listeners, tell us about your background, who you are, and what you do today. I'm a tenant Rep represent companies across the United States. I work for a company called More Partners. We specify in working with national clients across the real estate portfolios, helping them basically as an outsourced real estate department for a lot of firms or an extension of the real estate group. We're one of the few tenant Rep only commercial real estate firms still around. Explain to me what tenant Rep is as if I'm a fifth grader. Basically, we represent a company. When they're looking to occupy a space, they're looking to rent or be inside of a building, whether it's an office or an industrial building.

1:40 I say I, I have little kids. I try to explain it to them. It's like we live in this house and imagine, you know, if we were paying rent to somebody, you know, I'm representing us in the house, I guess is that's the simplest way to put it. You did a you did a very good job. Sometimes I'll ask people to do that and they could not get the 5th grade level. But no, I have this thing with tenant Rep. I love tenant Rep. I think it's a fascinating industry that people don't really talk about. Why do you think that is? I think in some ways, you know, we got forgotten because I think a lot of people either don't even recognize that we're part of the commercial real estate industry.

2:22 I think there's everything is so driven by landlord side, you know, property management, leasing agency, capital markets, like a heavy amount of commercial real estate is driven on the landlord side. Think a lot of companies in general, smaller firms, they don't even understand like why would I bring a tenant Rep into a deal? It makes no sense, right? I could just do the deal directly. And that's something that we run into a lot where we're having to convince groups, hey, you're not getting a good deal going directly. And that's where we come into play. Not only we'll get paid a Commission, but we'll actually lower your rent. We'll actually get you concessions by going into the market and getting proposals even if you're going to renew. So I just think it's kind of like one of those things that just people don't think about.

3:08 Yeah. Well, you're going to learn about it today, So what product type do you generally exist in? So we specialize primarily in office and industrial real estate. A lot of our clients are typically, you know, three PL. distributors, but you know, in office it's kind of a mixed bag. Like we've done medical office deals, we've done headquarters. A lot of our clients where we typically do an, an office deal would be for their headquarters because it's usually a national group. We're focused on office and industrial retail, not I've done a couple retail deals, but it's a little bit more foreign to us. Yeah, I get a headache when I look at a retail deals.

3:52 Yeah, me too. Yes, I'm. Like OK, talk to me. What would Brandon today tell first day junior broker Brandon about tenant Rep brokerage? I would say, and when you're a young guy or girl starting out in this business, it is everything's smoke and mirrors. Everyone tells you, oh, it's going to be easy. Like you're going to make millions of dollars. And I tell my junior level people when they come in on day one, like it's going to be two years to kind of get going here, which when you're in your mid, I was 24 when I started. When you're that young, you're like O2 years, like OK, not a big deal. But when you're in the two year grind, it is really, really hard.

4:38 So what I would say is, you know, when I started in the industry, I was like, OK, I just need to get experience under my belt and that will give me credibility. And then the clients will come and want to work with me. And I would say even like in the last couple years, I kind of turned and said, you know what, it's the clients aren't working with me because of my experience. They're working with me because they trust me and because of our delivery and our communication. And the only way for you to gain trust is to truly be working with someone on a test case or doing free work for them to show them that you want to earn their business and be with them long term. So I think a lot of people when they start in this business, they assume that if I make enough calls and and talk to enough people that I'm going to get a client, which is, which inevitably does happen in the first couple.

5:28 But to get that prospect to become a client, you've got to do the free work, you've got to grind. You're going to get to the end of a deal and sometimes it's not going to get done. And you know, the first two years is brutal. So and I, I tell my guys it all the time, I'm like it, this is not easy. If it was easy, everyone would be in it. And I think that a lot of people, they get into the business, just think they're going to make a lot of money and it's going to be easy. And unfortunately I've seen a lot of people come in and out of this industry. So it's rough. Yeah, no, I I was like smirking and laughing because we have AI was looking today, we have a blanket in our daughter's room that we saw a deal through to the closing table and then one of the parties didn't show up to the closing table and it couldn't close and they felt so bad. They gave us a blanket for and it writes. I was like the most expensive blanket ever, that business. That was 200 hours of work.

6:30 Yeah, that's great. I mean, it's, it really hurts when you have those situations, but they're those are character builder, right? That's I guess that's the only way to put it is you learn through those situations that this is hard, keeps you humble. But then, you know, when you get a deal done, it makes you excited about it. And I mean, unfortunately deal cycle takes a while in our business. I mean, I, it's six months to a year, I mean, to get a deal done or to get a client in and it's not, it doesn't happen overnight. I mean, three PL. clients can sometimes want to turn things around in three months, which those are, those are great deals because you get them done faster, but they're also nerve racking because your client needs to get in and you got to find the billing and negotiate a good deal in a compressed timeline and not leave money on the table for them.

7:21 So we've dealt with that a lot and we try to tell our three PL. clients, even if you don't have the contract yet, pretend like you do, like start the deal 12 months out if you can, at least six. And like, you know, I know landlords aren't going to like to hear this, but you know, we have to go to market and a deals not done until it's signed. So, you know, unfortunately, I know as a landlord, you're like, well, you say you're not a real deal. And it's like, no, it's not true. It's just this is how the business works. This is how three PL. works. So it's it's dating, it's dating. Sometimes you got to do a lot of work and nothing's coming back. I mean, it is what it is. Put a ring on, isn't it, Mr. Landlord?

8:02 Butter. Real. Exactly. OK, So what would Brandon today tell the Brandon who had done his first two years antenna Rep, he's gotten through the hard part that learning curve. What would you give junior broker who has a little bit of experience? What advice would you give him today? Honestly, what I would say is you just got to keep grinding. Like even because you've got a deal done under your belt and you feel like you've learned a lot. You really don't know anything. I think it's again, one of the most humbling parts about this business is that every day you learn something new and you'll get a client who has a weird situation that you're like, I've been doing this almost 15 years. How did I not see this before?

8:52 And then but you, it goes into your memory bank and like you pull it out later. So I would say try to absorb as much as you can, but also recognize like you're not an expert yet. You're going to need to lean on your mentors and you, you hope that you end up with good mentors. I was very fortunate that I had a great mentor and who I still work with today. And I think that that's also kind of part of the luck of it. Unfortunately, as a junior level guy, it is you're going to get lucky who you're working with. And I've tried to pass down my wisdom to my junior guy. And sometimes I get the I roll like, all right, like, OK, Gramps and I, I turned 39 this weekend. And it's funny, I I never, when I started, I was a kid. So now I'm like, I'm almost middle age. It's kind of depressing a little bit. Happy birthday.

9:41 Thank you just. You're a puppy. Thank you. OK, talk to me about your target. Are you dealing with Fortune 500? What type of clientele are you working with? Yeah. So we're focused on Fortune 1000 and 2000 clients primarily. We've had some Fortune 500 clients, but I think it's really about being able to service the under service client, right? The groups that are getting forgotten about 'cause we're the ones that end up working with them. And I'm not going to name names, but our biggest competitors, they tend to drop the ball on some of the smaller clients because there's just not enough money in them. And but The funny thing, you know, from a Commission perspective, but from our side, if we're working with middle market clients, we know that we're going to make money in the long run on deals, right? But we're not trying to hit a Grand Slam every time because we don't have to split it 50 different ways with every office, right?

10:39 So yes. So in a Fortune 1000 scenario, who are you contacting as right? It can be very overwhelming if someone wants to go in and do what you do. Right. Who are you contacting? What's, what's the juice in the strategy that you'll give us to success in tenant Rep in 2026? Yeah. So it's interesting. So when I started, it was driven by banging the phones, right and just hustling and making, you know, a 10,000 calls a year or more as much as you possibly can. And so we would call, it's all CFOSCEOSCOOS, general counsels, directors of real estate, kind of depends if it's a big enough company, directors of real estate. But now everything's changed, right? Like everyone gets screened on their phones. So good luck.

11:30 I used to call into the receptionist and then get try to get dialed in. And then I would talk to the executive admin and she would be like, he's not talking to you, like good luck. And then you would, you would call her back a week later and you try to create a relationship with her and hope that you could get on his calendar. And then you would or you wouldn't or you'd get lucky and she would be out that that day and it would go directly to his desk and you'd get him. Those days are over, right? Like where we live in now, everything is screened all like I screen my calls. Now if you call me and you're not in my phone, it goes to voicemail automatically because I get so many like crazy calls every day. You know, really what's changed is you know, it's going into the algorithm, right? And being relevant in the digital world, being an AI, right?

12:14 If you're not posting and being relevant in the digital world, you're irrelevant and you can't get ahold of people the traditional ways anymore. Now, again, I know a lot of people like to do e-mail blasts and and newsletters, and that's great and some of that can work. But I think that you have to figure out a way to breakthrough the noise and get people to see you as an authority, right and incredible, which is important and building a brand. So my focus really this year has been heavily on just making sure that I'm building our brand the right way and, and having more visibility online because I feel like I just kind of neglected that. I don't, I'm not a big social media person. I don't go on my Facebook unless I have to write happy birthday to my wife. I'm other than that, I don't have, I don't have an Instagram account.

13:02 I'm basically like a boomer. You know you've got to get. An Instagram, I'm sure MO's telling you, you got to get Instagram. I know. Maybe someday we'll see that's. Hilarious. But look, this is the Wild West. Yeah, it's crazy, right? Like it is so crazy to see such a big industry. OK, we'll say commercial real estate as the industry and then tenant Rep as a right, an arm industry. It's almost like there's so much opportunity. It's overwhelming because how what is the new phone? I'm right with you where it's like I hate getting calls because of the mania. I can't help but think the person I'm trying to call feels. I know they feel the same way.

13:49 So how do you? OK, let me ask you this, pre social media what are the effective ways to provide value that you have found to gain trust in a commercial real estate relationship? Honestly, to gain trust is to get the opportunity right, You have to get in front of them somehow. So the only way to really get in front of somebody is you're going to have to get you're either going to have to reach out, you know, on your phone, which is impossible now, or you build off a platform online if people that people can see your success stories. And that's what we're working towards right now. But I would tell you, my junior guys, they still bang the phones because that's kind of that's what it was.

14:29 And kind of, I think maybe I hopefully it'll continue to work, but they have to make a lot of volume. Calling it is really, really hard. And then when they set a meeting, you hope that the person shows up. But I think to gain the trust is you got to get in front of them, look at look at them in the eye and tell them, you know, this is what I do on a daily basis. And they have to believe you and give you a shot on a deal. If you don't have a test case to work on, you know, or, or you're not giving them value in some other way, you're not relevant, You're not going to gain their trust, you're not going to be able to work with them. National to me, at the end of the day for us, we want to work with a client over their entire real estate portfolio, not across one deal because one deal comes and goes and then you got to go hunting again for another one. And we've done very well having national clients because it's like an annuity.

15:18 You, you're working with them on all the real estate and then you get to know each other well, which ultimately helps with, you know, streamlining the process, create a good process for them. So interesting. So how do you lease buildings in different states? Right. Yeah. I I'm so curious how you structure. It so working when the tenant side we go into markets and you know we have local offices and local presence. We have 26 national offices across the US and you know we tap into those offices. We also have brokers inside of our firm that have licenses in other states. We're covered in every state across the US and have representation in Canada and Mexico. And so the way we do it is, I mean, honestly, and this is the question I get all the time, well, why? Why would I work with you instead of a local broker? And the answer I think is simple, like as long as you're doing the deal, it's not in a tertiary market like out in the middle of Fargo, ND where people may not be using Costar Loopnet. Nothing is hidden under a rock nowadays, right? You Co star has changed the game. We all know that they have pretty much all the listings on there for the most part.

16:29 And so we can dig into those markets and find the buildings and verify them for you. What matters most is making sure someone's representing your interests and every single deal and not aligned with the landlord side because sometimes a lot of these brokers on the ground, they do landlord and tenant work. So the institutional side, they make more money representing the big boys, the prologises of the world, not throwing them under the bus, but they represent the big landlords. And then when they're pick up a tenant locally, the alliance isn't to that tenant. That's one deal. When you have a portfolio of 10 properties you're listing, it's your alliance is going to be to them. And I don't blame them, there's no fault on them. But that's why we do national work for tenants. What's the biggest shift you're seeing right now in the way tenants are making decisions?

17:20 You know, I think it's interesting. Industrial tenants, I think are a little bit more apprehensive now about, you know, taking new space and moving. Obviously there was a massive construction cycle that just went through, right and during, during COVID and then kind of ended in, in 22 and 23. So really kind of went to a standstill and it's been pretty dead and you know, 24 and 25 because of financing, right? And, and it was hard to get the materials, but then it was expensive to get the materials. Then it was done. The financing wasn't there and, and the cap rates were too low back then. And, and now if it's like a, an 8 cap or A7 cap, where if you told somebody that back in, in 2020, they're like, it's a three cap, Can you imagine like 3 caps now?

18:05 So everything's kind of changed. But I guess what I'm getting at is the tenants now are, you know, on the industrial side are saying, all right, we're not going to take more space unless we know we absolutely need that space. And what's happened is I think there's 1.5 billion square feet of property that I read in biz now that's currently available for lease in the industrial arena. And 12% of that is sublease space. So that, which is the largest it's ever been and that is that shows that tenants are giving space back. They're not taking space and they're trying to right size because they, they're, they paid a lot of money, right? It's expensive in 2020 and 2021 when they cut those deals.

18:47 So again, what I, what I don't want to say is that industrial is going to go where office went because it's not don't, OK, that's not going to happen. Industrial's just stabilizing and getting to where it should be. But I think that because there's no new construction coming online right now, you're going to see a tightening again. I keep telling my clients the next two years it's going to re tighten again. You're going to see the rate start going back up at a big clip and then you don't want to be late to the party on that office is the other side of it. Rents are starting to finally go up. I mean, Class A offices are are fully leased. The trophy buildings in Chicago are all fully leased. It's the, it's the middle, it's the B buildings that are struggling a little bit and they had to reposition.

19:33 But I think, you know, people going back to the office three to four days a week now. I mean, my friends that are in corporate America, they're all going in three to four days a week now. That's a good sign for office now. New York and Chicago were overbuilt. And, you know, we're, I think New York's in better shape than Chicago right now. But we're, we're starting to come back. And I think, you know, I'm not, I'm optimistic. I think it was overblown, you know, that they were going to start knocking down buildings or converting everything to, you know, hotels and residential. That's just not going to happen. It's just not. The money's not there. People didn't want to office them in them. None of us live in it or pay a premium for hospitality.

20:15 I digress. That's funny. Super interesting. OK. The final question is what is your commercial real estate secret? It would say my secret, and I don't know if it's much of A secret, but it's really about making sure that you're building trust right throughout your organization, the people that are working for you, as well as building trust with your clients. Because I think that that is something kind of a lost art. I think a lot of people are focused on, oh, look at all my credentials, Look at all this great stuff. And I and I was one of those people too that fell into that trap. I think that we need to be more focused on building the relationship with the client and making sure that they understand they're being heard, but also giving them solutions. Like we're here to give them solutions to their issues because they're busy, they have other things going on. They, they want to cut through all the BS, right? And get to the meat on the bone.

21:12 And in the way you do that is by building trust 'cause then they'll lean on you more, right, To, to help them with the big decisions. I mean, going into real estate's typically the second biggest cost for most companies. So I mean, it's very important that they trust you. No different than if you're a realtor in residential, you want to make sure that your client trusts you, right? Because they're the biggest purchase of their life. I think a lot of people in our industry forget that trust is the ultimate factor of being able to secure and keep business. Brandon Only I'm only saying this because we're at the end of the episode. You better believe I look at half of my competition and I'm like, I wouldn't trust you with a penny.

21:59 True. Unfortunately, unfortunately it's true. Our our business, it's bad, yeah. I've seen people go for people over nothing. Yeah, like, and I think you're right. It's like trust is it's real. It's either they're you. Know like it's tangible? Yes, it is actually tangible. Even though people don't believe it, it is and you can create it with anybody. You know, you really can. You just got to you got to put in the effort and we're in a world where people just forget about it. It's just like, you know, but it helps us the those people that are not trustworthy help us get more business. It's nice for them of.

22:41 Course, and like, I genuinely believe that we we work with people who we want to work with, who we click with, who we, you know, maybe there's mutual trust. Yeah, some people you get along with better than others. And, you know, I think the bad guys work with the bad guys and the good guys work with the good guys and. Totally agree. Totally IA 100% agree. Yeah. So no, it's interesting. I love talking about tenant Rep. I'm strangely passionate about it. I'm really excited for you in your social media journey. Thank you. Yeah, it's a big deal. It's it's a big step for me. I think it's, you're going to notice that it's going to pay you tenfold because if you think about the concept of compound in interest when you post a video online, it works for you when you're not working. And that is really, really powerful. So then if you do that over and over and over and over, you have like 1000 videos working for you while you're spending time with your family, and that's more work than you could ever put in in, you know, just being one person at one time. Totally agree.

23:56 Yeah, thank you so much and thank you for having me on today. I really appreciate it. It's a great chatting with you. Likewise, so for the listeners, where can they find you, contact you, follow you? Well, LinkedIn, I'm doing a lot of posting right now, but also my you can hit me up on my e-mail address toobrandon.clickandmorepartnersiol.com or our website. Yep. Mohr. Mohr. Yep. The H is silent. All right, the H is silent. Thank you for being on this show today and for everybody listening. We'll see you next week.