Optimising Your Real Estate Portfolio: The Key to Unlocking Value

In a rapidly evolving business landscape, optimising your real estate portfolio is not just about securing spaces but ensuring those spaces work for your business. As a corporate occupier, your core focus isn't real estate; it's running your business. Yet, the cost and terms of your office, warehouse, or retail spaces are significant factors that impact your bottom line. This is where our expertise in real estate strategy and consulting becomes invaluable.

Optimising Your Entire Portfolio

Optimisation starts with a comprehensive review of current assets, leases, ownership, costs, and relocation opportunities. Here's our approach:

• Demand and Supply assessment: We assist you in establishing your business’s optimal office size requirement based on headcount, hybrid working approach, market benchmarks and business-specific operational requirements. What do you need vs what do you have? – and recommend interventions to ensure you achieve an efficient office make-up (not too small, not too big).
• Location and Demographic Analysis: Ensuring your properties are in the best locations for your business needs.
• Competitor Analysis: Identifying where competitors are and how that impacts your locations.
• Commercial Analysis: Benchmarking costs across your portfolio to ensure competitiveness, ?and opportunities for cost reduction
• Utilisation Management: Analysing space utilisation to avoid paying for unused space, especially important with hybrid work models.
• Workplace Strategy: Determining the right mix of meeting rooms, collaboration areas, and overall space requirements to match your operational needs.

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Ideal location, best price, flexible terms

In today's real estate market, occupiers are reducing costs by either renegotiating leases in their current spaces or downsizing to smaller, higher-quality spaces at lower total costs. We also help companies cut expenses by focusing on gross leases for easier budgeting and exploring cost-sharing opportunities in multi-tenant buildings. Efficiency and sustainability, such as renewable energy and water harvesting, are increasingly important in real estate decisions. Additionally, companies are scrutinising all real estate costs, including parking, to identify savings and eliminate unnecessary expenses.

Cost reduction is a primary focus. We look at:

• Amenities and Business Requirements: Ensuring your lease accommodates necessary amenities and considers staff needs.
• Flexible Terms: Evaluating lease terms for flexibility options like renewal rights, cancellation rights, the ability to up/downscale, or sublease options. This aligns lease terms with your business goals and provides adaptability.
• Scalability and Expansion Rights: Securing rights of first refusal for potential upcoming vacancies within the property, adjacent or otherwise, to facilitate future growth.
• Avoiding unforeseen costs: Operating costs such as security, cleaning, utilities, and maintenance are typically non-negotiable. We ensure these costs are market-related and transparent, helping you avoid surprises down the line. Our team provides a thorough analysis to ensure these expenses are justified and competitive.

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Ensuring Your Lease is a Good Deal

One of the most frequent questions we encounter is: "How can we be sure our new lease is a good deal for us?" Our strategy team provides comprehensive advisory services to tenants, taking into account numerous factors to ensure favourable lease terms. Here's how we assist:

• Market Analysis: We analyse current market conditions and benchmark your proposed rental terms against industry standards. This ensures your lease is competitive and aligned with market trends.
• Negotiation Support: Our transactions team can handle negotiations on your behalf, leveraging our market insights and expertise to secure the best possible terms.
• Comprehensive Lease Review: We scrutinise lease agreements to ensure that the commercial terms work for you, not just the landlord. This includes evaluating rental escalations, operating costs, and additional flexibility terms.
• Incentives and Market Outlook: Negotiating additional incentives, such as tenant installation allowances and rent-free periods, is another area where we add value. Understanding the market is crucial. Rental markets fluctuated post-COVID but are now stabilising. Landlords are gaining leverage, making it vital to have experts ensuring you know where your negotiating power lies.

Continuous Monitoring and Data Management

Consistent monitoring and reporting are critical for large portfolios. Our strategy team tracks occupation costs, utilisation, and market trends. Our sophisticated data management system centralises this information, enabling real-time decision-making and planning. This means clients benefit from having a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of their real estate assets, allowing them to identify inefficiencies and opportunities for cost savings promptly. With detailed insights and predictive analytics, clients can make informed decisions on space usage, lease renewals, and potential relocations. This proactive approach helps clients stay ahead of market changes and ensures that their real estate strategies align with business objectives, enhancing overall operational efficiency and financial performance.

By helping you articulate business cases and providing expert support, we ensure that your real estate portfolio is optimised, flexible, and aligned with your business strategy. With the right experts at hand, you can confidently navigate the complexities of corporate real estate management and focus on what you do best — running your business.