Just consider the sale of a home to a couple, the wife in love with the kitchen, and the husband excited about his new garage workshop. Really, the greatest part of the job has been accomplished when you help them to locate the home. They fall in love with it on their own. Not so with a commercial buyer or lease client.
There is a great deal more financial analysis, market demographics study, and environmental research involved in a typical commercial purchase or lease decision. The commercial client is usually much more concerned with area statistics and data about the property's location and the demographics of the local population and businesses.
The average day's activities for a commercial real estate broker can be quite different from those of the residential agent. Here are a few of the activities you may find on your task list for the day:
- Cold calls on business managers and owners
- Study of the lease payments for office complexes in the area
- Calculation of the break-even ratio for a commercial property
- Interpretation of current leases for a prospective multi-family buyer
- Report of population growth for likely patients for a medical rental complex
- Cap rate report for a prospective buyer of a small shopping center
As you can see, this list has activities that never come up for a residential real estate agent. There is a higher level of analytical activity for the typical commercial real estate professional. The rewards can be worth the effort required, but you should thoroughly compare your desires and abilities to the requirements for commercial real estate brokerages.
