Author: Jason Hughes
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The Big Bang Theory
on
While apartments and hotels have gone up downtown at a comfortable pace, it remains an open question whether there will be enough new office buildings to meet downtown boosters’ hopes for a vibrant commercial center, especially in East Village’s 35-block I.D.E.A. District.
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Pity the office space shopper who believes what he or she sees in front of most office buildings these days. With all the “For Lease” signs in downtown and in other locations, the unwary prospect could get the impression there is an abundance of office space readily available and adaptable for tenants of all sizes. Nothing could be further from…
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One of the more confusing areas for businesses leasing office space is the lease itself. Few things are as hard to compare as what tenants pay for their space, given the differences in how rents are structured. There’s nothing wrong with the fact that there are different structures for office rents as long as the tenant fully understands what expenses…
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Office tenants typically pay little attention to their building lobbies and care even less about what’s behind the drywall surrounding their office spaces. That’s about to change, however, now that a new way of computing usable and rentable square footage is gaining popularity among landlords here and elsewhere. First, let’s cover what have been the traditional definitions of usable and…
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Asset management plays a very critical role in creating value for building landlords in the world of commercial real estate. This is an intensive business in which investors — or landlords — are there for one reason: to make money. And while the goal may be singular, the business itself is complex and multifaceted. The highly competitive and cyclical nature…
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Like most enterprises, commercial real estate has its own set of fables and paradoxes. Many are little more than harmless misconceptions based on out-of-date information or ill-informed sources. Others, sadly, are much more problematic — even dangerous — to the health of tenants seeking fair and equitable representation in securing office space. Chief among those is the primary misconception that…
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A newspaper article earlier this month discussed at length the tactics other states are using to lure businesses away from San Diego and other parts of California. Sending promotional literature touting “The Lights Are Always On In Tennessee” and flashlights to California-based businesses are some of the schemes that particular state is using to interest technology sector businesses to relocate…
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In a recent column dealing with the Internet industry’s office needs, I quoted a leading national real estate investment specialist as saying: “E-commerce is changing real estate’s maxim from ‘location, location, location’ to ‘location, price, service.’” He’s right, but the trend extends far beyond the needs of e-commerce office tenants. When you think about it, those three determinants of value…
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As automation and computerized information systems make many secretarial and other back-office positions obsolete, large office work areas filled with rows of secretaries, typists and clerks are fast becoming a thing of the past — more typical of “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” era than today’s high-tech office environment. But despite the predictions by some workforce experts, high…
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Not only has the Internet revolution required all of us to learn new concepts, words, phrases and ways of doing things, it has made some terms and concepts in commercial real estate obsolete. Whatever you call it — the “Internet industry,” “e-commerce,” or “dotcom” businesses, — the phenomenon has become a change agent in our society unlike anything since the…
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If there was any question of whether the perils of office tenant abuse was an appropriate topic for a column in this newspaper, it’s been answered multiple times over since that article appeared several weeks ago. Quite frankly, my chief regret is that I didn’t bring up the topic sooner, given the number of letters and phone calls I’ve received…