Your Doorway to Commercial Property. FREE to List!

Rapaki Property Group is pleased to announce a new leasing initiative for the six months from 15 January 2010 to 15 July 2010. For our buildings, we will pay TRIPLE COMMISSION for leases written over six years in duration and DOUBLE COMMISSION for leases of under six years.

Terms and conditions:

1. This offer is valid from 15 January 2010 to 15 July 2010.

2. To be eligible, an unconditional Agreement to Lease must be signed before 15 July 2010. There may be some reasonable exceptions to this, but they will need to be discussed and agreed at the time and on a case by case basis.

3. Lease duration is measured less any rent free periods or other incentives offered. Accordingly, a six year lease with a one year rent free period, Landlord’s fit-out or similar would only be considered a five year lease and eligible for double commission only. To qualify for triple commission it will need to be seven years. The value of any incentive is calculated against the value of the lease term at the quoted rate in the Rapaki Property Group list of vacant space as emailed on 15 January 2010.

4. Commission is calculated by reference to the standard scale of fees set by each Real Estate company on 15 January 2010 and will be paid as per the standard process.

5. As per usual, effective agency is the most important criteria in determining who receives the commission. We will however notify you if a tenant has been taken through our buildings with another agent or directly through us.

6. CHRISTCHURCH AGENTS. Golden House (728 Colombo Street), Union House (193 Cashel Street) and the Waltham Road collection of properties are excluded from this incentive.

We look forward to working with you in the months ahead.

SIMON HENRY – Managing Director

15 January 2010

Written by Michael Smyth on Business Blogs.  See original HERE

Why Business Tenants should proceed with caution

With commercial vacancies in New Zealand’s main commercial centres tipped to go above 10%, many businesses may be tempted to get bigger or better premises, or open up new offices to take advantage of lower rents. However, the future has never been more uncertain than in the current economic downturn and businesses are well advised to look carefully before signing any documents which could ultimately spell financial disaster later on.

Know your documents

Before signing any document, you must understand what you are signing. Do not rely on the word of a Real Estate agent who may tell you that “its standard and everyone signs”.

If you are going into business premises there are two types of documents which you could be asked to sign: a lease and an agreement to lease. A lease is a contract between you and your landlord which sets out all the terms you have agreed relating to how that lease will operate. An agreement to lease on the other hand, is simply an agreement that you will enter into a full lease agreement at a later date. Since it is not a full lease, the agreement to lease does not contain all the terms you will later be agreeing to. By signing an agreement to lease document you may be committing yourself to signing a lease which works against you and in favour of the landlord. Therefore, it is important to get any agreement to lease document checked by a lawyer before you sign. If you don’t, then it may make it extremely difficult for you to extract yourself from onerous lease terms later on.

What onerous terms should you look out for?

There are a number of clauses in a typical or standard lease agreement which you should watch out for and negotiate. The first issue you should consider in the length or term of the lease. Don’t be persuaded into entering a long term such as six years without the ability to get out of the lease early if you need to. In the current economic climate you need the flexibility to bail out in case business goes bad. If you have committed to a long term then you remain liable for the rent whether you are in occupancy or not.

If you set up a separate company to take the lease, you may not think that will avoid the risk but it is likely your landlord will ask for a Director’s or Shareholder’s guarantee. This makes you, the business owner, personally liable if the company doesn’t pay. The same could apply if you assign the lease to another business and it doesn’t pay.

An assignment may not solve your problems either

When you “assign” a lease, you sell it to another party so that they become the tenant for the remainder of the lease term. You would think that this would absolve you of a liability to pay rent, but not necessarily. Many lease agreements provide that the original tenant (and guarantor) remain liable for the rent regardless of any assignment to a third party. Therefore, if the third party defaults on the rent, the landlord may come after you. Clearly this is undesirable so you need to negotiate these clauses to absolve you of any liability. If you don’t, you will not only end up liable for the rent which you originally agreed but also any rent increases that occur during the term… which brings me to my next point.

Will any rent increases be fair?

Beware of what are commonly called “rent ratchet clauses”. These are clauses which automatically increase the rent at given review points regardless of what the market is doing. Such clauses could mean that you end up paying greater than market rent which is very undesirable. Rent reviews in themselves are normal but they should be based upon market rent and not on some arbitrary figure. Therefore, pay close scrutiny to how these clauses are drafted.

Of course, the obligation to pay rent will just be one of many tenant obligations contained in the lease and care should be given to ensure that the remaining obligations are also not too onerous. For example, the obligation to maintain the premises will fall upon the tenant but you must ensure that they are not too wide. Also make sure that you have budgeted for other costs such as rates, insurance premiums, rubbish collection etc. One cost which sometimes catches tenants out is the obligation to pay the landlord’s solicitors’ costs for preparing the lease. Make sure you find out what these costs are (and negotiate them down) before you proceed.

Always Proceed with caution

Needless to say, lease agreements require careful reading before you sign on the dotted line. Few business owners will be qualified to do this without expert advice which is where your solicitor should come in. Always run these documents past your lawyer first and never rely on the advice of a real estate agent, otherwise your business could end up with a weight around its neck which in turn could spell financial disaster for you and your business.

GroupSpace is a very useful feature of the FindSpace site.

What it allows you to do is view multiple listings on one Google Map.  See the example HERE.

To generate a GroupSpace map is very simple.  All you have to do is carry out a search, any search.  You are initially presented with a List View but at the top of the listings you will see the option to View List on Map.  Just click this to generate the map.

If there are many listings in one spot you will see a number (showing how many listings there are).  Click once on the map to drill down to the next level and repeat if necessary.

Eventually you will see a small yellow icon signifying a listing.  If you hover over the icon you will see the address. Click once on the icon and it will give you Summary Information,  click on the address to get Detailed Information.

The SpaceFinder search tool is possibly the most comprehensive and most powerful tool available on any website.  We have spent a lot of time deciding what is relevant to our end users and designed it around the factors that most users are interested in.

A typical search string maybe:  Office space in Auckland, within the suburbs of Newmarket, Ponsonby or Auckland Central,  with usable office space of 300 m² , storage of 50 m² , and showroom of 10 m² .  You also require at least four car parks and the building must have air conditioning and possibly a shower.

SpaceFinder is the only search tool that will allow you to search on all these variables, and then once you generate a short list lets you view all the properties on one Google Map, called GroupSpace.

Using SpaceFinder is very easy but we do suggest that you build your search up step by step, adding additional options as you go along.

There are two search levels, Basic and Advanced.  The Advanced one allows you to set values into more fields.

To select multiple Suburbs or Categories just hold down the Ctrl key and tick the items you want.  You could also search by Post Code (under Advanced Search) to get a very specific geographical snapshot.

To set the Space Details you can use the scroll bars.  Moving the first one sets the Maximum Value (and displays the second bar), then move the second bar to set your Minimum Value.  The same applies to Price Details.

Once you have set the values you want click on SEARCH to produce your shortlist.  This can be viewed on our GroupSpace map by clicking on ‘View List on Map‘.

If the shortlist is showing either too few or too many listings then just click on SpaceFinder again and modify your search.  If you are running ‘what if’ scenarios, you can Undo Last Changes at the bottom of the search page.

At any point you can save your search criteria (you must be logged in) and get e-mailed of any new listing that meets your needs.

If, like us, you are faced with finding new premises for your business then we can fully sympathize with you.

I constantly ask myself, why is it so hard.  You look through a number of websites all of which have different designs and present a limited amount of information.

Alternatively you drive around the area you are interested in noting down premises that are available and justify further research.  Back to the computer again and start the job of looking up the details on what you found,  you contact the vendors only to find the premises was rented/sold a few weeks ago but they haven’t got around to taking the signs down…..now how do you feel?

What you are looking for is retail space on or around Queens Street, that has 150m²of retail space, about 50m² of storage space and at least 80m² of office space.  You also require at least two car parks and it would be great if it had a shower or maybe a mezzanine floor.  Price wise it must not cost more than $250 per m^2.

This surely is not too much to ask, right! The reality is, it was, but now FindSpace will let you search for exactly what you are after.  Here are some of the features and tools of our site that will assist you in your search:

1. For all properties that are for sale and/or lease we ensure there is a price loaded against the listing as the last thing you want to do is waste time looking at properties outside your price range.
2. We capture the full breakdown of a property into its area types so that you can run a query as structured above with multiple building uses.
3. We capture a Post Code for all listings so you can see all retail space for sale/lease within a geographic area.
4. We provide the most comprehensive search tool, SpaceFinder, so you can quickly narrow down your search to exactly what you are after.
5. We automatically expire all listings every 28 days so you never waste time reviewing properties that are no longer available.
6. We display your shortlist of properties on Google Maps so you can easily see how they all relate to the area you are interested in.
7. We only list Commercial Property so the site is 100% geared to capturing and displaying only relevant information (no field for number of beds on our site).
8. Once you have saved your search criteria we will e-mail you daily any new listings that are added that meet your requirements so you don’t have to spend any more time than necessary in this time consuming pursuit.
9. Our site is completely open so Landlords/Property Investors get the exact same deal and features as Real Estate Agents.
10. We even provide the ability to push all your listings back to your site, ClientSpace, so you only have to maintain the data on the FindSpace site and it appears on two website, two sites for the work of one.
11. Last, but not least, the site is currently totally FREE to list so there is no barrier to landlords not listing with us.

We are constantly working on the site to make it better for you, the end user.  So if you have property for sale or lease it makes very good sense to list it on FindSpace as your customers will be better able to find it.