Practical thinking for NYC commercial property owners across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. No listings, no commissions — just the analysis I'd give a client.
Written by David Ratner, Founder & Principal Consultant.
Face rent is what you ask. Effective rent is what you earn. In a submarket where tenants shop between new towers and older buildings, the stack behind the number decides how fast a floor leases.
A maturity forces a deadline. Price the hold, the refinance and the sale side by side, in cash after debt service, before you talk to a lender or a buyer.
Industrial tenants ask for time, doors and power, not office-style allowances. Price each request in dollars per square foot before you answer it.
Industrial tenants rent docks, power and a dry roof, not finishes. A tiered capital plan spends where tenants can measure the gain and defers what only looks good.
A storefront shares a tax lot, a roof and a boiler with apartments. The share you write into the lease decides how much of the building's cost the retail tenant actually carries.
A renewal option is a promise about a rent nobody can see yet. The wording that defines fair market value, the floor and the notice window decides who wins the argument five years later.
Loft tenants choose a building on freight, power and compliance, not on the lobby. A tiered capital plan spends where income is lost first and defers what only looks good.
Small Queens tenants shop a monthly rent, not a price per foot. A side-by-side comparison of one big suite against four small ones shows when division raises income and when code work erases it.
When a loft lease expires and the tenant stays, a one-line holdover clause decides who gains from the delay. A short guide to the clause, the math and the first three steps.
Class C office tenants rarely fail on a credit score. They fail on thin cash, a brand-new entity and a use the building cannot carry. A short screening standard turns those checks into deposit and guaranty terms.
Face rent, free rent and tenant improvement dollars cost an owner different amounts at different times. Price the package to the tenant who is actually looking, tie it to term and protect the face rent.
Loft buildings carry costs a standard lease was never written for. Define the expense pool, allocate the freight elevator on use, fix the tax clause and use renewals to recover what the old leases missed.
A reliable retail tenant asking to renew at the old rent is not a safe deal. Price the storefront, trade term for value, repair the lease and keep a real alternative alive.
Industrial tenants fail on use, thin cash and the wrong insurance, not on a missing credit score. A short screening standard turns those checks into deposit and guaranty terms.
Lenders, buyers and family each describe a different building. Marking leases to market, laying out the expiration calendar and comparing all three paths after tax shows which one fits.
Bronx Class C office is leased to medical, tax, home-care and professional users, not corporate tenants. Pricing from what each user can afford, and sizing units to match, shortens vacancy.
A tenant asking to reset its rent thirty months early is offering certainty in exchange for a discount. Pricing the empty floor first tells an owner what that certainty is worth.
A maturing loan forces three decisions at once. Defending the income first and comparing every option on one page turns a family argument into a numbers decision.
Most vacant storefronts are priced from a neighbor's ask. Pricing from the tenant's sales, the block and the space itself shortens vacancy and protects the rent roll.
A 9,000-foot floor that will not lease whole may rent quickly as three or four suites. Here is how to test the demand, cost the layouts and know when to leave the floor alone.
A full building can hide a 40 percent income gap. Here is how to size it, price the tenant's cost to leave, and choose the right route for each lease.
In Bushwick, Gowanus and Greenpoint lofts, the right protection depends on the tenant's risk tier — a rule set to write before the offer arrives.
When another price cut stops working, the fix is usually the building itself — a decision framework for owners of older Manhattan office stock uptown.
A flat monthly check is simple to underwrite. A percentage-rent kicker can pay more over the term — but only for the right tenant, corridor and lease.
A staggered expiration schedule looks manageable until a third of the rent roll converges on the same window. Here is how I sort each lease — renew early, reset to market, or let it go dark — before the tenants raise the subject first.
The listing agreement is the first negotiation of the deal, and most owners sign whatever the broker hands them. Here is how I decide exclusivity, term, commission and carve-outs before a single tenant tour happens.
Base year, expense stop, or a flat CPI bump — the mechanism you pick decides whether rising taxes and CAM costs erode your income or protect it.
A single vacant industrial floor and four smaller leased units are not the same asset. Here is how I decide, with real numbers, when subdividing a Brooklyn warehouse pays for itself, and when it doesn't.
A maturing loan does not ask what an owner wants to do with a building. It asks what the numbers can support. Here is the hold-sell-refinance framework I run for owners before their lender runs the numbers for them.
Tenants compare effective rent, not face rent. An owner who structures the concession package deliberately wins the tenant and keeps the NOI.
A percentage-rent clause and a personal guaranty are worth nothing against a tenant who was never going to make it past year two. Here is how I underwrite retail credit before a landlord signs away frontage for a decade.
Tenants are told to demand NNN caps, audit rights and repair shifts. Here is how a landlord prices the space, documents the pass-throughs, and keeps the building's economics intact.
The consulting-only playbook for Class B and C buildings in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.
Empty floors in older office buildings are rarely a demand problem. They are a product problem — and product problems are fixable.
Assignment rights, renewal rent, escalation base year, restoration, the good-guy guaranty, delivery date. What each one costs an owner over the term, and what to trade instead.
A retail ground floor, offices above, maybe a residential unit or two. Here is how to find the income hiding in a mixed-use building.
They are not competing services. They are different jobs with different incentives — and most owners have only ever been offered one of them.