If you are a typical San Diego small business, with between 10 and 20 employees, and you are looking for new office space, you might be surprised to learn that in the Kearny Mesa area you have over 180 available space alternatives! That statistic is shocking, even to me, and I have been in the business through two real estate cycles. Want to look in Carlsbad? You currently have over 230 available space alternatives. And if you are willing to consider the Downtown market, hold onto your seats…..you will have over 260 available space alternatives. Is this too much of a good thing?
Most companies facing a real estate lease expiration and/or relocation decision will take the first step of hiring a commercial real estate broker to help them navigate the myriad of property alternatives. But what are you supposed to do when your broker sends you a 15 megabyte PDF file that is 500 pages long and includes 260 opportunities? How do you find the best value opportunity in the midst of hundreds of options? And how do you find this needle in the haystack without spending countless hours touring every option in the market?
The answer: Hire the right broker.
The key is to hire a broker whom you trust, most importantly, but also a broker who specializes in the market areas where you want to locate. A professional can help you navigate this maze as your fiduciary agent, leveraging the current market opportunities without wasting your time. There is a fine line between showing a client every building, to make them aware of the abundance of opportunities, and showing them just the properties that meet their requirement profile. At Hughes Marino, we typically sit down with a client and discuss the macro-market survey, pointing out the building owners for each of the properties, the last 2-3 deals completed in the building, the vacancy, the financial wherewithal of the owner, and whether any of the available options are worth considering based on our client’s unique size and desired layout. In my experience, it is difficult to tour more than 5 or 6 properties with clarity and focus, as eventually they all blend together and it is difficult to distinguish one property from the next. So how do we get from a 260-space survey to a building tour of 6 properties? We do this by working side by side with our clients and by asking the right questions up front. It is imperative that we understand our client’s objectives and the key elements of the space requirement. We help our clients to make better real estate decisions, which means saving time and saving money. And great real estate outcomes help our clients continue to grow and thrive in San Diego.
