Posted by: once
Comment: #1
Fri Mar 14, 2008 3:37 PM
We encountered a longer-than-we-wanted lease in renting a small office once. We asked our broker to find out from the owner's broker if we could get a shorter lease. The response we received, "Oh, no! There's no chance of that in this booming market. The landlord won't even consider it."
Well, come to find out (years later: we're still in that space), the *landlord* would have much preferred a single-year lease, but *his agent* flatly refused because it would hurt *her* commission. It seems that the professional agents get a certain percentage of the lease, but not of the options on the lease, or something like that, so a five-year lease gets her five times the payment as as a one-year lease with four optional years, even if you end up staying for the same length of time.
The landlord, BTW, has never used her services again for any of his properties. If you ask for a shorter lease and get a brushoff, it may be worth finding out the owner is and making sure that the owner actually heard about the offer you made. It turns out that some agents "forget" their legal duty to inform the owner of all offers. (Just like they "forget" to take down their advertising signs after the lease is signed, if the property is in a high-traffic location.)
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