Landlords / Tenants

We act both for landlords and tenants assisting them through the leasing or renting process from conception, initialisation, fulfillment and, in the case of landlords, asset management. Our primary focus is industrial, office and retail space, located throughout Atlantic Canada.

Because of the breadth and depth of our six consulting divisions, we can bring considerable expertise to bear: valuation and appraisal, Lasercad® space measurement, economic intelligence, property tax, planning and counselling. Our Economic Intelligence Unit can provide site selection, trade area analysis and demographic studies to aid in the location decision. Our Lasercad® Division can assist in space planning and certify the usable or rentable areas to the appropriate BOMA/SIOR standard. Our Brokerage Division is able to draw on these resources to reinforce their own strengths: knowledge of the marketplace, marketing and negotiation. All of our staff are salaried professionals; the product of our own seven year training program. They work as a team, building long term relationships with clients, some extending back over the forty plus years we have been in business.

Leasing or renting space requires the appropriate expertise at each stage of the decision making process: determining what size space to lease or rent; its market rent; how it compares physically, fiscally and legally with its competitors; the appropriate marketing strategy; and negotiation of the leasing or rental on terms that maximise the client’s objectives. This requires a comprehensive, timely knowledge of the real estate markets and its players: landlords and tenants.

Landlord Representation

Landlord representation occurs when the landlord retains us to lease vacant space, undertake pre-leasing, lease renewals, sub-lease, restructure existing leases, or negotiate lease buy-outs. In order to obtain the highest possible rent, and/or the most advantageous terms for the landlord, it is necessary to (1) reduce the risk of the transaction to the tenant to the greatest degree possible by creating scale plans they can utilise for their space planning, (2) certify the usable and rentable areas to the appropriate BOMA/SIOR standard, (3) price the space appropriately and, (4) expose the premises to the largest number of qualified, potential tenants.

Where necessary our Brokerage Division is able to draw on the support available from our Lasercad® Division to create the scale plans and certify the usable and rentable areas. They can also call on the resources of our information technology platform CompuVal®, and their own knowledge of the marketplace, to determine the market rent. CompuVal® is a leading edge IT platform which acquires and combines property data including rents, common area maintenance, and realty taxes, from multiple sources to give us a comprehensive insight into the regional rental marketplaces. CompuVal® is proprietary to Turner Drake. Our Brokerage Division has developed a structured marketing program to identify, acquire and qualify potential tenants and to expose premises to the widest range of potential tenants. It combines our professional staff’s personal knowledge with CompuVal®’s data acquisition and analytical capabilities. To further expand our marketing reach we establish a co-broker network and have carefully structured our leasing commission so that it is “broker neutral”; we get the same fee whether we lease the premises with the aid of another broker or directly ourselves. Since we have no incentive to “double end” the commission our objective is directly aligned with that of the landlord … to get the premises leased! Our Brokerage staff are the product of our seven year real estate training program which includes negotiation as a defined skill set.

Tenant Representation

Tenant representation occurs when the tenant retains us to act on their behalf to locate suitable premises, negotiate lease renewals, sub-lease, restructure their existing lease or negotiate a lease buy-out. Since we act as the tenant's agent we are legally and morally obligated to act in the best interest of the tenant: however our broker's fee is usually recovered from the landlord.

Our salaried Brokerage personnel have access to details on virtually all of the space available for lease. Most leasing is undertaken on a co-operative basis: landlords or their brokers actively pursue a policy of providing details on space availability, rents and operating expense recoveries to commercial real estate brokers such as ourselves. This industry practice ensures that tenants represented by a commercial broker will have access to virtually all of the space available … and provided that they are so represented, will be able to compare and select the space that best meets their budget. It is usually more cost effective for a landlord to deal with a knowledgeable commercial broker representing a qualified potential tenant than spend time educating a party who may be just a “tire kicker”. In addition, some premises are available on a "sub-lease” basis at a discounted rent. Our Tenant Representation Agreement is straight forward: unambiguous yet well documented it details our obligations to our client, the tenant. We (1) review our client’s space requirements and budget, (2) locate suitable premises, (3) prepare specifications based on our client’s broad requirements and circulate them to landlords, (4) obtain proposals from landlords, (5) analyse and prepare recommendations, (6) prepare and submit Offers to Lease and then negotiate acceptable lease terms.