Pushing Dirt

1. mail 1000 postcards out this week. use an online postcard design service like expresscopy.com for the postcard design and mailing, and generate  a mailing list from dnb.com

2. place an ad in craigslist

3. place an ad in your local paper

4. develop a broker/agent email list and send out an electronic announcement

5. put a big banner on the building

6. raise your commission offered and publicize that

7. offer cash for qualified tours

8. Offer a 2 year lease on a car if you’ve got a lot of space to lease

9. use adwords advertising tied to keywords related to what you have to offer (e.g., “los angeles office space” or “maryland warehouse.”

10. fire your broker and hire a new one

11. go to elance.com and hire a telemarketer to make calls on your behalf. make sure you’re in compliance with local laws when you do this. calls can be made off of a list from dnb.com

12. go door to door with flyers in hand in the the neighborhood.

13. dial for dollars

14. send out a press release to the local business journals announcing your space is available and highlight what makes it unique. Many are so eager to fill space they will run the ad.

15. Offer “free rent.”

16. list the availability and buy advertising in costar.com

17. is your property in loopnet.com?

18. How about a guy twirling a sign board on the busy street nearest your property?

19. dancing sock man? (see the picture on this post)

20. Try propertyline.com advertising

You saw I was running low on steam when I got toward the end of the list. What am I missing? What creative approaches have you used to get vacant space filled?

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It pays to interview your prospective commercial real estate agent.

The biggest key in my opinion is to get the right agent for the job.

If you’re looking to lease 2000 square feet of warehouse space, it doesn’t pay to hire a top producer at a national company…if somehow you manage to get them engaged at all, the work will be carried out by a runner (ie a rookie) with little to no experience.

Believe it or not there are brokers for whom these little lease assignments are their bread and butter. Some complete 50 to 100 of these transactions a year. For the small requirement, work with one of these agents.

NEVER hire a residential agent to represent you in a commercial transaction. Ever. As the agent how many houses they’ve sold in the past 24 months. If the answer is greater than zero, move on.

Each product type — office real estate, industrial real estate, retail real estate, etc. — requires its own skill set. Find the agent with the appropriate skill set for the job. In a smaller market you may need to deal with more of a generalist, but in a major metropolitan area you will find agents specializing in one product type. Industrial and office are my focus, and I’ve turned down many multi-family disposition assignments over the years that could have potentially been very lucrative.

Be prepared to be questioned back, qualified by the agent, and don’t take that personally. They may save you significant time by helping you hone your search, and if you’re talking to a talented commercial agent you’re going to learn a lot for free.

For commercial brokers to thrive:

10. Focus on the buyers: who can close a deal in this environment? Who is active? Monitor the comps.

9. Call on lenders. Broker the sale of troubled notes and REO (real estate owned by the bank).

8. Make short sales: that involves convincing the lender of a mortgage sale to discount the mortgage balance to facilitate a sale.

7. Prospect: How many of you actually make cold calls? Knock on doors? Try harder!

6. Call on owner occupants of real estate and suggest sale leasebacks. This is often the cheapest source of capital for companies in times when the lending market is tight.

5. Review your listings. Punt sellers that aren’t willing to adjust to the new pricing reality but remain demanding of your time.

4. Look to list and sell property encumbered with attractive, non-recourse financing: since this kind of financing is hard to get and rare, these assets are particularly sale-able today.

3. Take a page out of the residential agent’s playbook and call on “expired listings” and FSBOs. This is a fine time to be the 2nd or 3rd agent to take on a listing that’s due for a fresh face and a reduction in price.

2. Consider tackling a new unique product type: think car washes, mobile home parks, golf courses, churches, timber land, theme parks, cell phone towers, power generation plants, etc. etc. etc. Anywhere the competition isn’t.

1. Use some of that free time you’re not spending making deals to get some professional education: www.ccim.com.

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doing a test run with an indian telemarketing firm to identify users of search for space to lease or buy.

I wrote the script and provided the list (from dun and bradstreet, or rather d&b). The price?

1000 names and numbers from d&b at 14 cents each: $140

40 hours of telemarketing time at $4.95 per hour (firm projects they will be able to call and speak to or voice mail all prospects in this time frame) $198

For a grand total of $338.

they are appointment setting calls (i.e. ‘would you like to hear from an agent about space opportunities…)

should be interesting…even one lead — one that i could refer to another agent for a 25% referral fee — would pay for the effort (or rather lack of effort) many times over….

I’ll keep you posted.

an old cliche, I know but one many brokers forget. close mouth. engage ears and brain. make more money.

If you’re in the commercial real estate business, you’ve probably heard of Loopnet.

Unfortunately, Loopnet is for a large part a morass of unsaleable real estate. If you’ve ever panned for gold, you’d have an idea how difficult it is to find a worthwhile investment opportunity on Loopnet.

One reason? It is loaded with property that is unlisted and that agents have no right to be offering. Why? Loopnet isn’t in business of qualifying these listings. They’d prefer to be able to brag about having “$425 billion of properties for sale.”

I have never sold a property in 10 years through Loopnet. I continue to use it because I feel like I owe it to my clients to give their properties the widest possible exposure.

Here are 10 better ways to make deals, whether you’re looking to to buy or sell property:

1. Craigslist

2. Direct mail

3. Costar - they do a better job qualifying listings

4. Contact owners directly by mail or phone

5. Newspaper advertising

6. Email blasts to broker lists like ccim.com

7. Door to door canvassing

8. Build your own web site and buy google adwords to promote it

9. Contact the top investment sales brokers in your market, meet them and court them

10. Track foreclosures

For the moment, Microsoft has edged out Google in a battle to photograph the Earth.

I was impressed with Keyhole — a satellite imaging application that allows you to “fly over” and label satellite images, and has great potential for brokers, owners and the like interested in developing sexy marketing presentations. Google showed a lot of foresight in buying this company. They rebranded it Google Earth. Google Earth can give a “simulated” 3-D view by taking satellite photos that were taken from directly overhead and “tilting” them.

Google had a great innovation with its street view photography. In certain cities, you can get street level views of (primarily downtown) areas. [Microsoft actually did this first, but only in Seattle and San Francisco. I've read they may be moving to expand this].

Taking it to the next level are the “oblique” (ie three dimensional, taken from a 40 degree angle) aerial images from Pictometry. These images are acutally shot from light aircraft and are much more useful for real estate professionals.

You can view these images from free when you pick “birds eye view” from Windows Live Search Maps. You can go to a number of vendors on the web that sell high quality Pictometry images for $25 each. I use Mapmart.

With these birds eye images, I know longer have to pay hundreds of dollars and wait for days or weeks for a professional to fly and shoot my projects. If you are in the real estate business, you owe it to yourself to start using Pictometry images for prospecting and marketing efforts.

3. get a contact management program (e.g. Act!). Then really use it. Put every prospect you talk to in it. Schedule regular follow up calls. Make the calls

4. Telling isn’t selling. Put yourself in the prospect’s shoes. How can you help them make more money?

5. Consider subscribing to Lexis Nexis’s people finder service to track down difficult-to-locate owners. There you will find unlisted phone numbers.

6. Make the sales calls. It’s the hardest part. Most sales people loathe them.

7. If your focus is on selling property, work to secure exclusive listings. Make it your focus.

8. Consider taking the CCIM 101 course which teaches the basics of underwriting commercial real estate. Most of my colleagues and competitors can’t do much more than apply a capitalization rate to value a property. Being able to go a little beyond that, to have a basic understanding of discounted cash flow analysis, will lend you a TON of credibility.

9. When marketing commercial buildings targeted to users, use direct mail. You can buy lists at reasonable prices from D&B (www.dnb.com). You can design and mail the postcards from any number of online web sites.

10. I’ve sold a ton of real estate — primarily smaller assets — through craigslist. If you live in a major market where craigslist is popular, use it.

We are reaching a point in the economic cycle where it is time to start tracking distressed properties.

Look for the legal announcements in the newspaper highlighting foreclosure proceedings on commercial properties. You’ll be able to pick them out because you know the market and recognize the address, or by the loan amount listed.

I recommend that you then call the lender and not the property owner. You can find the lender most often because lenders typically record a UCC filing statement with the government to document their lein on the property. These UCC filings may be listed online, or you may need to head to your local courthouse or records office to find them.

Call the lender and find out who deals with “troubled loans” and who deals with “REO” (real estate owned). You can broker the sale of the note to an investor (perhaps at a discount). If that doesn’t fly you will want to stay in regular touch with the lender who may ultimately foreclose on the property…or the borrower may just hand the keys back to the lender.

Position yourself as the local market expert and secure an exclusive listing to sell the property!

If you suspect you’re going to have trouble getting a prospect to return your call, consider this (some may say devious) tactic.

Leave a message, pretending the voice mail cut you off, e.g, ” <BEEP> so give me a call and we can talk about it…again, it’s Chris and you can reach me at 443-574-1415.”

People are innately curious, you may find that the return-call rate is astounding.