Think for a minute about when the listing agent for a building you are considering supplies your team with the answer “no” to your inquiry for more tenant improvement dollars.Who is saying NO?And what degree of weight is to be put on the NO.Listing agents frequently have been given parameters of acceptable terms by their landlord client.Listing agents respond to Requests for Proposals every day.Listing agents have egos also and occasionally flex their authority.Listing agents have brokers. Brokers have landlord clients.The landlord itself may have numerous layers, the portfolio management team in one city, the property management team in another city, the legal team in yet another city and the equity holder in another.Each of these positions job is to say no.There should be a sign on their door saying just this, and it should be printed on their business cards.None of these positions gleefully throws caution to the wind and gives away freebies with seeming reckless abandon. But every day, these same people agree to leases all over the world with the same concessionary results because the crafty tenant negotiator understood this family tree of who will likely be in the decision stream.Local landlords also have a variable decision stream: the listing agent, the property management company, the owner, the owner’s spouse, the owner’s bank, the owner’s attorney, and the owner’s accountant.In one deal we did, the landlord’s crazy brother-in-law who owned 5% of the building had input.
Before you agree to accept their no answer, consider who behind them could agree. Just like you not wanting to spill all your jelly beans in your first step in the lobby, the landlord has his own negotiation tree to consider, usually giving only inches in the opening round. Frequently not even that. Understand that at every building there simply will be several rounds of negotiations, each one moving deeper into the financial give and take of the deal.Know where you are, what yard line you are on, how many other layers remain with the landlord to penetrate, don’t get frustrated at many different “no” answers.Ultimately you will arrive at the point that no is either a yes, or it is an absolute no, but you never would have known that if you didn’t push all the way past the one yard line.
