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Connecticut Office Space Is On Sale Now!

As Connecticut office space vacancies continue to rise, commercial real estate owners will be decreasing asking rents and making concessions to attract credit- worthy tenants in the market today.  Smart owners will aggressively work to fill their buildings and lock in their cash flow now.  Connecticut office space is going on sale in 2009!  How can your small business benefit from this economic downturn?  If your business is stable, now would be a great time to consider trading up to class A space in that swanky office building you've been longing for.

It’s Hot, It’s Cold! Temperature Control in an office building.

Today I visited a company in a lovely office building in West Hartford, CT. It was a first class, multi-story building around 100,000 square feet, no small property.  After a few minutes, I was taking off my jacket and looking for a glass of water. No kidding, it was hot! When I mentioned it to the person I was meeting, she said it was an ongoing problem for them. She said she had asked the building manager to please not turn the heat on that morning because it always got so hot by noontime. The property manger said he had to turn it up because the tenant next door was so cold they needed the heat.

Clearly, this building has a HVAC problem when the control for one tenant's heat is in another tenant's space. So, if you are a tenant in a building struggling to warm up or cool down, here is some information that may be helpful.

It's Electrifying! How tenant electric is charged to you.

On our site, MySquareFeet, the premier on-line commercial real estate listing service, we frequently get questions from tenants about bills or notices from landlords that they don't understand.  And, we try to answer all of them or direct tenants to places where they can find answers.  Occasionally, a question leads to a good blog topic, as this one did.  Last week, a visitor to the site linked to our FAQ's and asked about a line item in her most recent CAM (Common Area Maintenance) bill.  She wanted to know why there was an electric charge in the bill when she paid her electric directly to the utility company.

Maybe we can help shed some light on this topic.  Landlords handle electric charges in their buildings in a variety of ways.  Here are the most common ways electric use is charged to tenants.

Help! My retail rent is too high, how can I lower it?

Unless you have been living in a cave for the last year, you could not have missed the news that the economy is stalled, no one is shopping, spending is at a standstill and millions of people have been laid off nationally.  What’s a retailer to do?

 

The lease you signed a few years ago in the economic boom, which seemed good at the time is now a millstone around your neck and threatening to sink your business – what can you do now?

 

In response to these hard times, many retailers are forced to shut their doors, but if rent alone is the make or break issue in keeping your business alive, perhaps there is hope – if – your landlord is willing and able to work with you, and you armed are with the right ammunition.

Office Suites, A Sweet Alternative

For Valentine's Day, I thought I would examine a "suite" alternative to leasing conventional office space for small businesses.  They go by many names, Office Suites, Executive Centers, Business Centers, Virtual Offices, or Executive Offices, and offer many different service packages and levels, from basic to gold plated opulence, but they all do one basic thing - provide an immediate plug-and-play office for your business.

I had never actually visited one of these services, so I called upon Tom Jamison of Connecticut Business Centers to give me a personal tour and behind the scenes look at his operation.  It was an interesting visit and I now think about the benefits these services can offer a small tenant in a different light.  To quote Tom, "If you tell me you want an office today, you can be in business with a T-1 connection here tomorrow." 

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.