Before you begin searching for a good for your small company, you should to get informed about the commercial warehouse leasing procedure. Being ready should help prevent you from making foolish decisions and costly mistakes you will end up regretting in the future. The following are some insider suggestions to help make an informed choice when letting a commercial property your company

Initiate the process of searching commercial space at least 6-12 months before your current lease expires or before your ideal move-in-date. Finding the right space and negotiating the deal alonewill require 1-2 months depending on the size area and current market conditions. In most cases the spaces you like will require some sort of improvements that the time needed will depend on the scope of work.

Thoroughly analyze your business’s current and future needs. Consult with the various department heads for input in addition to some key employees.

Get acquainted with the commercial real estate terms and definitions. Different landlords say and quote things otherwise. If you are in doubt about what they mean don’t be afraid to ask them to get more info.

If you are not knowledgeable about the commercial real estate leasing process or the current market conditions then consider engaging the support of a tenant representative. Their services don’t cost anything because landlords pay all of the rental commissions. The landlord rep will have an professional listing agent helping them so it would be a great idea for you to have one also.

Physically visit all of the properties that meet your requirements so you can make a short list. Bear in mind that the designs can be reconfigured so don’t get stuck on that. Ask the landlord representatives a great deal of questions about who owns the property, property amenities, required lease duration, how much the landlord is prepared to give in tenant improvement allowances, etc..

Don’t settle for the first commercial properties you believe is suitable for your requirements: continue looking until you have at least two to three alternative choices. These additional options will work to your advantage because you will know what to expect throughout the lease negotiations and you will gain more leverage with multiple landlords competing for your tenancy. They also give you something to fall back to whether the negotiations to your first choice go silent.

Send out proposals to your top three to five choices. These aren’t legally binding. You don’t ever need to take a landlord representative’s verbal word. Everything needs to be in writing.

To help you decide what property is best suited for your company, prepare a spreadsheet to do an apples to apples comparison of each property. A few of the things you need to consider include the dimensions of this distance, the inquiring base rental rates, the necessary lease term, and the incremental costs (taxes, insurance, maintenance, etc). It is also possible to take note about the advantages and disadvantages of each property. If you are budget conscious then you can quickly narrow down the list by simply calculating the monthly base rents for each property then eliminating those that are way above your budget. The monthly base rent is calculated by multiplying the commercial space square feet from the asking base rate plus any operating expenses then dividing by 12.

If any of the commercial spaces require tenant improvements then it’s critical that you figure out what improvements you want on each and get preliminary bids. That way if the landlord is offering a tenant improvement allowance you will know how much out of pocket you will need to pay above and beyond what the landlord is prepared to give.

Carefully examine and compare the terms of each proposal. Consider whether it is logical to go back to each landlord to negotiate extra concessions. Make sure you completely understand the total expenses you are expected to cover. Don’t get emotionally attached to a certain property until the negotiations are over. Emotional attachment might lead to you signing a contract your business can’t live up to.

After negotiations are finalized and you have made your selection now it’s time to have the landlord offer you the first draft of this commercial rental contract.

Now it’s time to review the commercial rental contract. It would be wise for you to hire an attorney to review the lease. For those who have a tenant agent then they could review the lease with you as well. Commercial lease language could be negotiated. If you don’t like certain lease items or want to propose new language now is the time to do so.

Once the end of rental contract negotiations has finished the building owner will give you a draft of the lease to review.

There are many more things to consider when leasing commercial real estate however these tips will help get you started. If you are a new company leasing commercial space for the first time or an current company who has only rented one or two spaces then consider getting help from a tenant rep. Their services do not cost you anything and you will save a lot of money and time.