Looking For Tenants in All The Wrong Places

Imagine that your company is based in a European country and you need to open a small branch office in Orange County. You call a Broker that has come highly recommended at Swartz Commercial Real Estate and ask for that Broker to have an assortment of spaces emailed to you so you can choose a few to look at upon your arrival in Orange County. You want to be around the Orange County Airport for ease of shuttling employees back and forth. You also want a nice building that will present itself well for clients stopping by.

Now imagine your surprise to receive an email with 50 choices on it. How can that be? You only want to be in top notch buildings and only within a mile of the airport. 50 Choices???? That’s absurd.

Absurd? Maybe. True? Definitely.

What happened to all the office tenants? That my friend is the big question these days. Office building owners are giving bonuses to brokers to do a lease, they are giving bonuses to tenants to do a lease and they are giving bonuses to existing tenants to not opt out of their lease.

I know that officials in the Federal Government are loath to use the word recession but an awful lot of ordinary people think we’re in one now. Office tenants seem very fearful of making a move in case business gets worse than it is.

Interestingly this makes for a very good time for a tenant to cut a great deal for the next few years. However, it is precisely at times like these that most people opt to do nothing out of fear. In many cases it’s an irrational fear but in many other cases the fear is justified.

Us, commercial brokers and office building owners may be looking for tenants in all the wrong places but so far no one has told us where the right places are. Any one who knows of these places please feel free to share.

For more information about Orange County Office market see this article in National Real Estate Investor online edition

Tags: leasing, looking for tenants, office space, office tenants, Orange County, recession, tenants