In this morning’s New York Times, it was reported that Goldman Sachs recently consolidated from three floors to two in its major Manhattan office tower. The Times reports that “the changes in real estate have helped Goldman reduce its cost by 17 percent since 2010.” This is yet another example of the value in corporate real estate strategic planning and why I wanted to spend a bit more time on the subject.
In the last blog entry we reviewed how the strategic planning process evolved from forming the planning team, benchmarking performance indicators, and setting priority objectives. Outlined below is what the strategic plan looks like:
So what are the major components of the corporate real estate strategic plan?
At the time I was the Corporate Real Estate Director of a major multinational corporation with a headquarters in New York City. It was the mid 1990s, and the real estate market in midtown Manhattan was a bit soft. Senior management wanted to move out of New York to an owned (and relatively vacant) office building in suburban Connecticut.
We are frequently asked why we need a new FASB lease standard.. here are our thoughts…
What are some guiding principles for selecting and investing in software functionality in support of your facilities and real estate operations?
Perhaps one of the most daunting and complex responsibilities of the corporate real estate executive is the management of lease escalation costs. These costs which represent expense pass- thrus from the landlord to the tenant can represent nearly half or more of the cost of tenant occupancy.
Many companies today use tenant representatives to handle various leasing actions such as leasehold relocations, renewals, expansions, and extensions. Tenant representatives are commercial brokers who typically operate exclusively as tenant advocates, while collecting commissions from building owners. This may seem like a conflict of interest, but the industry has self-regulating practices to avoid most abusive behavior.
There’s compelling logic to combine a lease audit service with a lease management system such as Visual Lease..
