MySquareFeet Blog

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.

How much space do you need for your business?

As a commercial real estate consultant, here's a questions I frequently hear. "How do I determine how much space I need for my business?" When you are considering a move for your company, or just starting out, you need to plan carefully when you calculate how much office space you need. Either too much, or too little space can be budget breakers.

Having the wrong space can interrupt your business or make it difficult to operate, but there are some techniques you can employ to get it just right. First, you need to assess your current situation, and then decide what your expectations are for the growth of your business over the next few years. Ask yourself the following questions:

• How many people do I currently employ?
• Does each employee need an individual desk or is sharing possible?
• Do I expect to add any staff in the next couple of years?
• Over what period of time will I add the staff?
• What kind of staff will I be adding, executive, administrative, or sales?

Going Green in the Office

Everyone is talking about saving energy, resources and living green. Here are some tips for making your business greener from MySquareFeet, the small business Internet resource for your commercial real estate needs.

Save Trees! Here are some easy steps to use less paper in your office- and while you are saving the planet, you can save some money too, using less paper and ink.

Stop! Don't print it! - How many times have you seen an article or a webpage you want to read later and printed it? Try not to succumb to the temptation to print. If you can't read it right away, book-mark the page. In our office, when we want to click the "print this article" button, we select a pdf printer, save it to our desktop and read it later. We installed an inexpensive $17 program from NowPDF that allows us to print to a virtual printer that captures a snapshot of the page for later viewing. Not only does it save on printing in the office, we send pdf files of letters and documents attached to email messages. Then, if it needs to be printed on the other end, we are assured that the formatting is exactly as we sent it...and we saved an envelope and postage too!

How a bad lease can bankrupt your small business!

A friend of mine was recently hired as the CFO for a struggling young technology business.  After about a week on the job he called me for some advice.  He knew I had a lot of experience in commercial real estate..20 years to be exact...and he feared he had a big problem with the company's office space lease.

I picked up a copy of the lease, and by page two, I knew this was no small problem.  This start-up company had unwittingly made about every mistake a small business can make when leasing space for a new business...and now, it could bankrupt them.

It all started when the business founders were happily funded by a venture capital company.  They needed space in a hurry, and one of the founders knew of a great building close to his home. They called the broker on the "for lease" sign (who always exclusively represents the owner) and began negotiations on the space.  It was a tight market, they needed space in a hurry, they were really smart computer programmers, they negotiated a lower base rent, then signed the lease. 

When the first rent bill came in, they were stunned.