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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Yes.

In The Huffington Post, Jim Randel wrote  (in a story with the same title as this post) that he does not see wide scale defaults in the world of commercial mortgages. He also wrote that commercial borrowers have much more equity in their properties than do homeowners on general.

Unfortunately he’s wrong. Many (if not most) investors that bought stable commercial investment property in 2007 are “under water.” Property values have fallen that much, at least in the short term.

He was also wrong about commercial real estate being a market devoid of emotion where real estate values are a pure exercise in evaluating cash flow and solving for a target return. There is a tremendous amount of fear and uncertainty among commercial real estate investors, and this emotion is keeping buyers on the sidelines despite some exciting opportunities to buy at spectacularly low prices.

I’m also not sure I buy his assertion that it’s an easier decision for a homeowner to make to hand over the keys to his or her property to the lender, that they have less to lose than a commercial investor.  A home is the biggest investment most individuals will ever make, and most (though I acknowledge certainly not all) put down a significant amount of hard-earned cash to buy those homes they are now losing.

He was right about some things, though. Mounting tenant failures will grow the amount of sublease space on the market dramatically in 2009, putting major downward pressure on rental rates.  He’s also right that as commercial debt has been tight lately, it’s pushed property values down.

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