tenant-representation-services

Set Up Your Office for Success

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Your office is the place where all of your success for your business can happen. Getting set up correctly can be the difference between making it big or losing it all. Here are a few great tips to get your office off to the right start when moving or starting your business.

  • Use Resources Wisely – When deciding how to budget the money going back into your business, consider cultural and environmental factors. This includes the space in which your employees spend most of their time. An office that has high satisfaction for employees can lower the turnover of your business. It can actually be a key factor when an employee is deciding to stay with, or leave, the company.
  • Placement for Prosperity – Knowing where your office will be located in proximity to cafes, lunch places, markets and fun environments is also an important factor when choosing an office space. When your employees enjoy their surroundings, it makes it a more productive environment within your office. It can lead to employees working harder during office hours to enjoy time in the local surroundings.

When you’re looking for the perfect office space for your business, be picky. Make sure that you take the time to analyze every detail of your new space to make your budget, and most importantly, your employees happy. Looking for tenant representation services? Check out TenantAdvisors.com for more information, today and find the perfect place in the Chicago area for your business.

Wheaton office space

2 Big Considerations When Choosing an Office Space for your Business

Wheaton office space
Your office space can dictate the overall tone of your business. Make sure when you are choosing a new working space that you take into consideration a few basic ideas that can help your staff feel important and make clients feel comfortable. Here are the 5 factors to a great office space.

  1. Location – Considering a location that works for not only you, but your staff and clients can be a daunting task. However, when you look for a space that can please everyone, you will see infinite rewards! Look into the environment nearby like places to grab lunch or host client functions as well as possibly outdoor space or a place for easy parking.
  2. Size – Nothing could truly be worse than an office that is too small or too large. A space that is too small can feel cramped and uncomfortable. It would be possible that clients do not like to visit such a tiny space that they cannot bring fellow colleagues or spend any time. Also, a space that is too large loses its personal feel. Allow for enough space that you can add a few more employees to let everyone know there is the possibility of growth, as well as room for lunches, meetings, social areas.

Yes, the cost of the property is important. However, it is also important to think of the comfort of your employees and clients. Take the time to tour office spaces and pick which will suit the needs of your business. Looking for Wheaton office space in Illinois? Check out TenantAdvisors.com to look at new spaces available in the Wheaton, IL area!

Office Space: Expect The Unexpected When Negotiating Your Lease

There are many terms which office space tenants think of during the office space lease negotiation phase. From the rental price to parking inclusions to who pays for the common area maintenance, there is certainly a lot of terms to consider. One aspect which tenants do not always consider during negotiations is what the relationship of the parties will be should a natural disaster occur, such as a hurricane or tornado, and cause damage to the premises. Although these instances don’t arise all that frequently, should they occur, you want to be sure that you, the tenant, are adequately protected.

Why You Should Consider Natural Disaster Safeguards

As a general rule, the tenant in commercial office space leasing agreements will still be responsible for paying rent should the premises become unusable in whole or in part as a result of a natural disaster. This is often the general terms included within a commercial lease agreement. Therefore, it’s important to safeguard yourself against these types of occurrences so that you won’t have to pay rent, or perhaps only pay a certain amount of rent, should this type of disaster occur.

Although natural disaster scenarios are not too common, these can and do happen, which makes protecting your interests as a tenant a necessary step to take. After all, you don’t want to find yourself in a position where your office space is unable to be occupied by you and your employees for an extended, or any, period of time. This lack of occupancy will lead to lost income and could, in turn, damage your business earning status.

How You Can Protect Your Tenancy Interests

The best way to protect your tenancy interests should a serious storm cause damage or produce restricted operations of the office space, is to include a term within the lease which states that the tenant will be free from paying rent or only have to pay a certain amount during the time in which the office space is unable to be used. This is a negotiation phase issue, which must be put into the lease in order for it to be effective. You will often find that the landlord believes such a term to be reasonable but it will only apply if it is included in the lease at the time in which it is signed.

This may not be an issue which is often on a tenant’s mind at the time the lease is signed. However, it is one which the tenant must consider ahead of time and have a safeguard in place via a lease term just in case the unexpected natural disaster would occur.

A commercial lease is a lengthy one and has plenty of terms to peruse, consider and agree to prior to signing it. Don’t let the unexpected event turn your office tenancy into a troublesome one. Make sure that you include the pertinent terms, one such term being the rights of the tenant should a natural disaster occur to make using the office space difficult or impossible.

Office Space

Consider Parking Options When Leasing Commercial Office Space

Office SpaceMany business owners are often focused on the office space itself when leasing a commercial office for their company. Although the interior of the office is quite important, it is vital to not overlook parking options when leasing office space. This is especially relevant in cities and largely populated areas where having parking on-site is an absolute necessity.

Inquire About Parking Right Away

When you are interested in a particular office space and are at the point of seriously considering leasing the chosen location, make sure you inquire about parking options right away, especially if parking is a must for you. This is a lease term which can often make or break a leasing commitment and force you to look elsewhere, especially if parking is what you want but not what you will receive if you lease that particular office space.

Find Out Whether Parking is Open or Reserved

Leasing will either be open or reserved in nature. With an open parking arrangement, you will have access to parking at a garage or lot but not receive designated spots, which means if the lot fills up, you are out of luck. With a reserved parking situation, you will have set office space parking and know that when you pull into your office parking lot, your parking spot will be available. This is often an important component for office space tenants to consider.

Ask About Client Parking Options

Even if you know that you will have office space parking for both you and your employees, you may not have parking spots available for your clients. It’s important to ask about this issue, and then determine if client parking is a necessity or not. Client parking is often an attractive feature as many customers and clients like to deal with businesses which offer ease of access to their facilities.

Make Sure Parking Terms are Included Within the Leasedeerfield

Even though you may have discussed parking terms and agreed that these features will be included with your tenancy, you must put it into writing and ensure that the lease contains the term related to parking. Rather than have a statement to the effect of “parking is included,” you should insert information related to how many parking spaces are included, whether parking is reserved or open, if clients may have access to parking spots while doing business with your company and other specific parking terms. Once the parking terms are included within the lease, you can rest assured that parking spaces will be available to you during your commercial office space tenancy.

Parking may not be a must-have inclusion for certain office space tenants. However, for others, having the access to parking for both employees and clients is a necessity which simply cannot be omitted from an office space tenancy. So long as you determine your parking needs, inquire about parking options and ensure that you will have parking spaces available to you, your company and clients, plus include such terms within the lease, your office space lease will consist of the pertinent items you need to do business efficiently.

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Office Leasing: Understanding Rentable vs. Usable Square Footage

photographer-349921_1280When you lease commercial property to be used as office space, your future landlord will mention terms such as rentable square footage and useable square footage when speaking about the rental cost. As opposed to having a single rent figure, these square footage calculations are used to determine just how much you’ll pay for your office space.

In the same discussion, common area costs will come up as well. Commercial tenants not only have to pay for the space that they use alone but also share the cost for maintaining the common areas with other tenants. The calculations may be a bit intimidating at first, however, with the right background information and a good tenant representative by your side, you’ll be able to figure out the details in no time.

What is Useable Square Footage?

When you want to calculate useable square footage, this will be the figure relating to the amount of space which you actively use. For example, your useable square footage is the square footage of your single office within an office building, if you lease an office space of this type.

What is Rentable Square Footage?

Rentable square footage is the amount of space which will include your office but also the restrooms, closets and other areas.

What is the Common Area Factor?Office Lease Renewal

The common area factor is the amount of space which is shared by all office space tenants. This will include bathrooms, cleaning closets, lobbies, copy rooms and other shared sections of the office building. There are two main types of common areas: floor common area and building common area. The floor common area is the amount of tenant common areas which are located on your floor while the building common area is the part which everyone within the building shares. These two figures are added up to equal the total common area factor.

How Do These All Add Up?

Calculating the square footage figures can be difficult for new office space tenants but tenant representatives are well-versed in these types of calculations and will gladly help you to calculate the figures with ease. The basic calculation is rentable square footage = useable square footage x (1 + add-on %). The add-on percentage can be calculated this way: rentable square footage/useable square footage – 1. The add-on percentage is sometimes substituted with a common area factor percentage and you can determine which percentage your prospective landlord uses simply by inquiring with them.

These factors show that there is much more to commercial office space rent than just a flat figure. There are distinct calculations which go into determining commercial office space rent and these figures will dictate how much you pay for an office space you use as well as common areas which you share with other tenants. Understanding these figures is much easier to do when you have a tenant representative along with you for any and all negotiations. Your tenant representative will explain these factors in layperson terms and help you out with any questions which you may have along the way.