Like the foundation for a house, your CRE project starts by having a true, unbiased assessment of your needs, for now and in the near future.  It can save you months in a property search, but millions of dollars wasted on a lease that does not fit your needs. So, you can solve this problem before it even starts by collaborating with a Tenant Rep. 

Tenant Reps know the right questions to ask you and your stakeholders, to help you formulate the Key Site Drivers (KSDs) of the project. This empowers them to properly leverage their knowledge of the market to efficiently find what you need.  Read on to learn how to properly: 

• Develop Property Criteria in a Needs Assessment 
• Understand Your Needs 
• Look Strategically at Your Portfolio 
• Leverage Your Needs to Compare Selections

 
Develop Property Criteria in a Needs Assessment  

Before you find the perfect space, you need to have a clear view of what you’re looking for. This is where your organization should take some time to pin down precisely what its dream office space would look like. Ask yourself these (and more) questions to determine what kind of environment you want to create.  

• Is it open and collaborative?  
• Are employees separated by private offices?  
• How many seats do you need to accommodate?  
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• Is your ideal location in the city or the suburbs?  
• What is the company culture you’re looking to maintain?  

A Tenant Rep can help talk you through your property requirements to determine the must-haves. But, regardless of whether you team up with a Tenant Rep or not, searching for office space will be easier after establishing a thorough, explicit assessment of your needs. To find your organization its ideal location, your Tenant Rep will get to know your company’s culture, plans for expansion, and any other needs unique to your business.   Certain features to identify as early as possible in the property search include:  

• Number of employees to accommodate    
• Time frame   
• Appropriate square footage per employee 
• Optimal geography    
• Necessary and additional amenities    
• Price range    
• Willingness to dedicate resources to build-out    
• Options to include parking, signage, etc. 

A needs assessment is also great because it will key you into other costs. For example, maybe one space needs more renovation than another. You know up front that you may be responsible for a more significant time and monetary commitment.  

Know that, if a property does not initially meet all your preferences, that does not mean you have to walk away. If an office space does not have everything you need right away, the operable question to ask is if it can be changed; how much that would cost and who would pay for that cost.  You may have more leverage to include those or other favorable features during negotiations with your landlord.    

Understanding Your Needs 

Isolating these factors will narrow your search and help you walk away from properties that don’t fully meet your specifications. But this is only the first step. A true Tenant Rep should evaluate your dream space beyond your precursory space requirement. They will get to the core of what you think you need to identify better options that open the door for positive opportunities and savings. 

Will Everyone Return to the Office?

You must consider how many seats must be accommodated over the period of the lease. Leases are long term so the optimal headcount will need to be projected out. That is why need forecasting is so critical to the proper assessment. For example, the future of the office is quite uncertain now. “According to a survey by TravelPerk, 76 percent of respondents said their companies shifted to a hybrid schedule. More employees than ever are working from home two to four days per week, only coming into the office occasionally.” 

By analyzing CRE trends, Tenant Reps have identified the evolution in square foot requirements. In previous years, there was a trend to compress down employees into a smaller square footage to save money. If COVID proved one thing, it is that this is not a sustainable model. Fitting employees to a radius of 100 square feet per person is not safe or comfortable for anyone. Employees should be allocated at least 200 square feet per person, maybe more. 

Even if you’re rapidly expanding, it may not be in your best interests to have a literal seat per person as you will probably have private offices, communal space, team space, etc. so, let’s say that you’re expanding at a rate of 5%. And for the purpose of this exercise, you’re allocating 200 square feet per person. So the following represents the evolution of your company’s space requirements (even with considering hybrid work). 

The critical thing to keep in mind here is that your most important asset is your people. Keeping them comfortable, productive, and safe in an environment that cultivates teamwork should be the top concern. But. Spatial optimization exists beyond base per person considerations. Different layouts demand different space requirements. Efficient, yet comfortable standard measurements for space allocation include:  

Layouts also influence the overall productivity of your office. For example, according to Forbes, “When employees work in a quiet space, such as an office with a door, rather than in an active area, productivity increases 17 to 22%.” So consider how you want your employees to work and how the environment will positively influence your team members.  

A Strategic Look at Your Portfolio 

As another example, Tenant Reps can look at individual transactions or entire portfolios. When they can conduct an analysis on the breadth of your properties, they can identify where there is room for improvement and opportunities for savings.

Is there an opportunity to consolidate offices or move to less-costly geographies? Does it still make sense to renew your high