Office tenants, this is for you. And it’s personal. If you don’t have your act in order in this overheated, over-priced and treacherous office market, you’re going to jeopardize your business and future. As a 30-year veteran advising tenants in this territory, I also have a piece of advice to other tenant-rep brokers: Do your flipping job. Outside of the tech sector, which has entirely fueled the frenzied space-grabbing in the San Francisco area, non-venture-backed tenants have been compelled to sign leases north of $60/$70/$80 per square foot per year – absolutely unsustainable levels.

Streamlining the process vs. skipping steps: At the inception of every tenant–rep project, we help our clients to organize them, to assist with the selection of a Team to handle all aspects of their office leasing project, and to begin creating a strategy and budget to reflect that strategy. To this point, we’ve probably taken our client further than where 99% of tenant-rep brokers go. Tenants are oftentimes too fixated on the execution and outcome of the leasing process and, to the detriment of the transaction, take advice from inexperienced or maligned brokers all too happy to skip to the commission payment.