Office Space for Lease! Or Not?
Every where I go I see signs like this. Just on the 2 mile drive to drop my kids at school, 11 ’spaces’ are now available to rent as “office space.” What does this say? What does it mean?
First, it means that we are in the midst of one helluva recession. A recession with an ‘R’ that looks an like a ‘D’. But we all know that. What I see in this, in combination with the some 600,000 people who seem to be losing their jobs every month, is opportunity.
Time to Negotiate
Sure, there is ample doom and gloom to go around. But there is good—no great—news for the coworking community!
There has never been as good a time to revisit that tightass landlord who, only 6 months ago, was still holding out for a 3-5 year lease, with a month’s or two rent deposit, 4 references, a bank account large enough to pay off the whole lease in the event of an asteroid strike, etc. Since you first visited him (and yes, it probably was a ‘him’), he has just been sitting on that property, collecting nothing. What he didn’t tell you was that he was probably sitting on that property for at least 6 months before you first met him.
So the question/issue, for commercial realtors, is this. Are you going to stay wedded to the traditional/paranoid lease structure process, and continue to sit on millions of square feet (nationally) of empty space, for months and months if not years, or are you going to flex with the times and get some money for that space? By remaining old school, you folks are just digging your holes deeper and deeper.
In walks the would-be coworking entrepreneur.
“I’ve noticed that this space has been for lease for… 2 years. Are you going to lease it to us, or are you going to just keep sitting on it. I mean, we do plan on paying you money. Our question is, do you want money or not?”
“Get back with us when you make up your mind.”
Drew Jones is an anthropologist, management consultant, and former business school professor. He works with 
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