"Today, smaller tenants are in a position to negotiate better lease rates at a shorter term," says Greg Azayev, executive managing director and principal broker at Stelth Commercial Group. (Photo: fizkes/Shutterstock)
When Alina Clark was ready to approach her office landlord with a conversation about renegotiating the rent, she knew that mentioning the economic havoc wrought by the pandemic wouldn't work. So the co-founder of CocoDoc, a software development company based in the Los Angeles area, tackled the problem in a different way.
"It's easier to get cuts on things like maintenance costs and utilities, instead of the base rent," she says. "We easily got a rent reduction by focusing on those instead of the base rent." It also helped that she assured the landlord the company was going to stay for the long term. "The fact that we were willing to commit for five years was one of the major considerations when renegotiating the lease agreement," Clark says.
Want to continue reading?
Become a Free PropertyCasualty360 Digital Reader
Your access to unlimited PropertyCasualty360 content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking insurance news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Weekly Insurance Speak podcast featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the employee benefits and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, BenefitsPRO and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
Erika Morphy
Erika Morphy has been writing about commercial real estate at GlobeSt.com for more than ten years, covering the capital markets, the Mid-Atlantic region and national topics. She's a nerd so favorite examples of the former include accounting standards, Basel III and what Congress is brewing.
