Keeping a careful eye on operating expenses is crucial when managing a corporate real estate strategy. Paying the overall cost for real estate that your company occupies is difficult. The best strategy is to generate cash to pay the operating expenses that impact your company's bottom line. Here are 3 superb tactics to improve your bottom line by generating cash that shaves pesky operating expenses:

1) Convert Tenants to Net Leases

Companies that own real estate and have additional space usually lease out to third-party tenants. Leasing space in this matter is an excellent corporate real estate strategy since it allows companies to control expansion space at little or no cost and in some markets, can generate profit.

However, if those leases aren't structured on a triple net basis, your company is exposing itself to paying operating expenses for all your tenants. Converting your tenants to triple net leases shifts the burden of OpEx to tenants. While you may have to lower your base rent, you'll have a commensurate decrease in expenses. Furthermore, as expenses grow, your tenants will bear the brunt of the cost.

Net leases also provide opportunity to earn additional income. Many net leases allow landlords to charge administration or management fees. If your business self-manages, you can add these costs to your triple net leases and get your tenants to help pay for some of your corporate real estate department's operating expenses.

2) Strategically Invest Capital for Reduced Operating Expenses

Capital expenditures can directly reduce your operating expenses. Investing in high payback efficiency upgrades like insulation, lighting and water conservation are excellent examples. With one to five year payback periods, these investments can free up cash very quickly.

Moving your company to occupy smaller and more flexible spaces is a corporate real estate strategy that also frees additional cash. Done right, an office that mixes small, open work spaces with areas for collaboration can cost less per square foot to build and furnish than a traditional office. This saves capital and allows you to negotiate more aggressively for lower rent since you need fewer TI contributions from landlords. Since it's smaller, you'll also pay less rent.

3) Aggressively Sublease Vacant Space

Subleasing vacant space is a necessary piece of your corporate real estate strategy. It can turn total losses into partial or neutral, and free up all of that money to pay other operating expenses. However, some companies don't get aggressive enough to sublease vacant space.

For example, consider a company that is carrying an unused 5,000 square foot Midwestern office with $18 net rent, $10 in CAMs and four years left. If it got an offer at $16 rent, it would probably jump on it, since the tenant would be covering $520,000 of the $560,000 of remaining obligation (assuming CAMs don't change and the rent is flat). However, the same company might not accept an offer at $4 net. However, that $4 offer works out to $280,000 over the remaining life of the lease - eliminating half of the company's liability.

Given the high rate of office vacancy in many markets across the country, accepting almost any sublease offer is a good corporate real estate strategy. Given that many companies are shrinking their spaces (see #2 above), the vacancy rate is unlikely to change, so it's better to take something than to wait for better times.