If You're Selling An Occupied Building, Here's What Your Real Estate Agent Needs To Know
Posted on: 8 November 2022
Commercial realty can be a tricky field, which is why you need to partner up with a real estate agent who knows the commercial real estate market. Especially if you're selling a building that has current tenants; you don't want to disrupt these businesses, so that agent will need to make sure that the tenants are protected. The agent will need to know a number of things about the building in order to build a customized sales campaign.
The Types of Leases That the Tenants Have
If the property is occupied, let the agent know what types of leases the tenants have. If they're month-to-month, the businesses there could be forced out rather easily, and maybe you don't want that to happen. The agent can help you place contingencies on the sale that require buyers to keep the tenants for a while. If the tenants have long-term leases, the new owners will have to honor those, and the agent will need to make that clear.
Liens and Other Legal Issues
If you know there is a lien on the property, be upfront. There are types of liens in some states that would prevent you from selling until the lien was paid off. But assuming you're not dealing with that type of lien, then a sale should allow you to pay it. You just won't see all of the money that the buyer pays. Now, here's the issue with liens. Even though they don't affect the buyer once you clear the lien, the mere fact that there is a lien on the property can make buyers shy away because they just don't want to get involved in whatever led to the lien being placed on the property. Your real estate agent can figure out a way to find a buyer even if there is a lien on the property.
Traffic Patterns in and Around the Property
You've got to give the agent some idea of how busy the property is, both in terms of customers and commercial foot traffic, and road traffic. A commercial property with little visibility from the road and not much in the way of foot traffic is not necessarily a bad property; but the businesses there have to be well-suited for that type of quiet existence, where you're not necessarily getting a ton of people walking in randomly to check the place out and buy things. So, it wouldn't be good for storefronts, but it might be good for co-working spaces. That affects how the real estate agent will market the property.
Any commercial property can be sold if the real estate campaign is constructed carefully and appropriately. If you're a commercial landlord looking to sell, give your commercial realty agency as much information as you can so that they can create a campaign that gets your property sold quickly.
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