REoptimizer^® Blog

Tenant improvements refers to the customization done to a space to make it meet your needs. A tenant improvement allowance is a sum of money that your landlord makes available to help defray the cost of your build-out.

One of the best answers to the classic question of whether you should lease or buy is to negotiate lease terms that give you the ability to do both. Options to extend your lease give you some of the stability of ownership by letting you stay longer than your initial term. If you want even more control, negotiating an option to buy can put you in control of the building if you want it or if you want to stop someone else from purchasing it. On the other hand, it also lets you avoid the costs and responsibilities of ownership if you are not yet ready to take them on.

As you're reading this, teams of accountants all over the world are working on new ways to answer an age old question in the real estate world: are lease obligations debt or not? Because corporate real estate has historically existed in a separate category from traditional debt, many companies have failed to manage that expense as aggressively as other obligations. If your company falls into this camp, here are some of the questions that your CEO and CFO should be asking.

When it comes to managing commercial real estate concerns, there are a whole range to consider. While cost is the most obvious challenge, it is just one of many.

Occupancy cost might seem like a relatively simple metric. If you add up what your company spends on its real estate portfolio, you have your total occupancy cost, right? However, as with any omnibus number, the total tends to hide important details. Digging deeper into your occupancy cost can help you to uncover savings. Here are four ways that you can get started.

If you aren't a full-time commercial real estate practitioner, the world of office leasing can be fraught with dangers. Words that might seem innocuous, buried in an office lease, could end up costing you money or obligating you to a longer commitment than you may expect. Here are a few terms to watch for and to understand.

One of the most important CRE metrics in the restaurant world is the rent-to-sales ratio. Most restaurateurs know that profitability starts to feel squeezed at rents that exceed 8 percent of sales and almost impossible to achieve when rents are over 10 percent of sales. Retailers also track their sales per square foot rent to sales ratios to ensure that pricey store locations are paying off in enhanced income.

Advances in technology have made buildings more energy efficient than before. However, these advances have come with drawbacks. Early attempts at efficiency frequently sacrificed user comfort. Newer buildings offered powerful ways to customize their operations, but they were complicated to operate, falling outside of what most commercial real estate occupants would want to use. Today's new, smarter commercial real estate properties are letting every tenant enjoy a greener and more comfortable building.