Does Working in Commercial Development = Leasing
Really just need to bounce some thoughts of other people's heads. The question is if you are working for an office/retail developer does that mean a large part of your job is acting as a leasing broker?
The one I'm at involves at least 50% leasing, and I'm being told that is just a part of working at a developer. I just want to see if that is the typical structure or if there are places that I could go where I won't have to spend most of my time networking with tenant rep brokers.
if it helps, i don't see anything wrong with a chunk of your time spent on leasing strategies, but i'm definitely not a Hines-type guy.
Thanks for the response. I like working on leasing strategies, I don't necessarilly enjoy cold calling tenant rep brokers to fill small spaces.
No, totally depends on the developer. The larger the shop, the more discernible the individual silos. Companies like Trammel, Related, etc. have a specific leasing group responsible for that work, as do smaller regional companies. The smaller developers is usually where the boundaries are fuzzy, where you may indeed have the development group also working actively on leasing.
Leasing is a super critical role in development, more so than in investment mngt (well, until a big vacancy comes up). Our firm has people on each development team that focus on leasing, they work with the brokers, work with marketing on strategy, and negotiate the deals.
This is considered an advanced role as it is negotiating and deal making, and only more senior people (like Director and above) get that type of assignment. This isn't to say they do it 100% of the time, but landing a big tenant in an office development makes you a hero. If not much to lease, then these people focus on land acquisitions (as you can imagine, there is an inverse relationship in demand there).
Depends on the firm.
Most firms I know have a dedicated leasing team, but the development team is responsible for the overall leasing strategy (i.e. what kind of tenant mix do we want for the property, who will our anchors be, etc.)
The senior dev guys might take responsibility for negotiating with the anchors and any specific tenants they want (let's say a developer wants to bring the first Ikea to a region), then the leasing team will work on filling the in-line units.
Wanted to follow up on this. My role hasn't been working on leasing strategy or negotiating leases, its cold calling tenants. I'm being told that's what development is from my higher ups.
My 2c: from an LP's perspective, the developer's purpose is to de-risk the project/deal from ideation through completion. Each step in de-risking solidifies/increases value. leasing is probably the single most value-additive step in the entire lifecycle of a property. Being awesome at leasing and having great prospective tenant relationships/network can make up for a lot of weaknesses. If I had to pick only 1 skill in which I wanted my dev partner to excel, it would be leasing. (Not that the rest aren't obviously important. Sourcing deals is a big one too. Just trying to emphasize how important this one is)
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