For Lease Signs or Goldilocks and the Three Bears

A friend of mine was telling me the story of how she was looking for space for her office the other day.  She only needed a couple of offices, which is clearly not the type of requirement that sets a commercial broker's heart on fire, so she decided to try to find it herself.

She had checked on line at my site MySquareFeet but there was nothing suitable posted, then she checked the newspaper but nothing was there either.  So, she took to the road, because "for-lease" signs are commonly found in front of buildings with space available, in fact there were about 50 signs on a two-mile stretch of the Post Road where she was looking.  She told me that it was quite possibly the most frustrating thing she had to do and she went on and on about how the signs were impossible to read, she almost crashed her car trying to pick up phone numbers while going 40 MPH and most of the signs didn't help much.

Her adventure reminded me of the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, some signs were too big, some were too small, but in this case hardly any were just right.

I hadn't given much thought to the informational content of signs for tenants searching for space before. Being in the business, I have other sources and really don't rely on driving around to get my market information. But, I decided to take a drive around and pretend I was a small business owner looking for space on my own. It put signs in a whole new perspective for me.

Now I don't want this blog to embarrass anyone, so I deleted the names of the innocent to protect their identity. But, in case you recognize one of them, don't taunt them with this blog. The goal here is to bring attention to an often-overlooked way to effectively advertise your available space.

This sign on the right (click the image to epand) and the one above are both exactly the same, just different sizes. The top one is smaller than a bread box and this one is larger than an SUV - but both say nothing except "available". What is "available"? Office Space? Medical Space? Retail Space? How much is available? 300 square feet or 30,000 square feet? This is not very useful information, and since I only need 500 square feet, do you really want to be returning my call if you have 5,000 to lease? My friend said she was really tired of playing phone tag with brokers and owners to get basic information, and sometimes she didn't even get a call back when she said she was looking for 500 square feet, but that's another blog post.

This is one of my favorites. When the owner leased some of the space, he just crossed out the balance with electrical tape. He also has this sign lit at night. Thinking as a tenant, what does this say to them? If this owner won't replace a $20 sign, what happens when I need something more expensive repaired? You see here that the sign on your property can give out subliminal messages about the quality of your property or you as a landlord to tenants.

Here is an example of a "just right"  for lease sign. It was inexpensive, at eye level and told me everything I needed to know; this was was office space for lease, it was a single office, it was offered by the owner directly, he was paying broker commissions and I had a phone number to contact him.

So the moral of this story is that you don't need to spend a fortune on a sign to have it help you with marketing your available space.

MySquareFeet is the on-line commercial real estate listing service that provides you with a platform to showcase your available commercial real estate affordably. An ad on MySquareFeet, provides a full page description of your property, with photos, floor plans, map links and a direct link to your email so tenants can connect directly to make inspection appointments or get additional information easily. And a three month ad on MySquareFeet is less expensive that a sign on the property. So add adverting on MySquareFeet to your marketing plan for your available space.

Comments

[Ellen]

This is great information. It will help me advertise some offices I have available for lease.