TenSource for Landlord Reps:

See who's in the market for space before you even list your property


TenSource is a database of tenants in the market for commercial space. Landlords/landlord reps use it to fill their vacant spaces sooner by getting prospective tenants in the door before they choose another landlord’s space. All data is sourced first hand from verified tenant brokers and is unique to TenSource.

Each tenant requirement includes:

  • Where a tenant is looking for space (specific down to the street)
  • How much space they need
  • Their rent budgets (if disclosed)
  • Other retail, office, or industrial characteristics
  • The Tenant Rep’s contact information

Here is a sample tenant requirement as it appears on TenSource:

Tenant Requirement

If a tenant on TenSource can work for any of your available or upcoming spaces, you email or call the tenant rep to schedule a tour or get more info. Simple as that!

To avoid sorting through the entire database of tenants, you can send us your listings (Upload flyers at tensource.com, send us an excel at properties@tensource.com, or email us with the address, unit, and size of your availabilities) and we'll create a customized tenant lead list for each of your properties.

Here's what a customized leads list will look like:

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Once we have your availability on file, we will send you an email alerting you to new matching tenants whenever they are posted.

Alert Email

If you agree the tenant works for your space, send the tenant rep an email or give them a call. If not, disregard and wait for the next one. We try to err on sending you matches even if they only match your space peripherally. This is so we don’t accidentally not send a good tenant, and to respect your position as the final arbiter of what does and does not belong in your space.


Upcoming Spaces

As a landlord rep there is often space you know is coming available, or a new or likely listing you want to get started on, but you don’t have marketing materials for it yet. That's perfect for TenSource because WE DON’T DISPLAY PROPERTY LISTINGS. All we need from you is the Address, unit, and size (no images, floor plans, or anything pretty required), and we’ll get you a customized list of tenants that could work for the space, without disclosing the available space information to anybody. You choose which tenant reps you reach out to, not the other way around.

So if you’re trying to impress a landlord with prospective tenants/tours before you get an exclusive signed; or want to get a head start on leasing a space before it makes sense to put together a marketing package/flyer; or don’t want to disturb an in-place tenant by listing their business’s address as available, TenSource is the perfect way for you to get a jump on leasing your space before letting the entire brokerage community know about it.

And once you are officially marketing a property by listing it online, blasting the flyer, etc, don’t just wait and be at the mercy of tenant reps finding you. With TenSource you can proactively reach out to tenants that may have missed your marketing materials. By always reaching out to tenants seeking space such as yours you’ll have more tours and activity than you would have otherwise. At the end of the day, more tours equals faster and better deals, which equals happy landlords, repeat business, and referrals.


Reporting Activity

As every broker knows, representing landlords isn’t just about leasing space quickly. Some landlords need more updates than others, and sometimes it feels like you’re spending more time creating activity to report to landlords, than actually doing everything you need to do to lease the space quickly. By reaching out to tenants on TenSource you’ll have more to include in your activity reports, which in turn keeps your landlords happy. And happy landlords don't take away listings, or interfere with how you execute your business. Reporting tours and conversations, along with demonstrating proactive reach-outs is the best way to keep your landlords happy and keep your listings until you fill them.


Free vs. Pro Access

To maintain as large a network as possible, and to encourage new users, limited use of TenSource is available free of charge. A free account gives a user access to every new matching tenant lead for up to 12 hours (it’s “unlocked” for up to 12 hours after we send it to you) and access to 20% of the existing leads in the database.

Pro accounts start at $79/month and entails unfettered access to all matching tenants (they are never locked) and unlimited access to every tenant requirement that resides in our database. See our plans by clicking here. And we offer free 15 day trials to check it out.


Common Objections

“I don’t need help”

I’m sure you don’t need help, the vacant space will lease eventually, but at what cost? Perhaps a tenant that could have worked settles on a competing space before they even view your marketing materials, so the landlord incurs another 12 months of vacancy losses as a result. Maybe it’ll lease after the end of your exclusive period and another agent gets the commission. Not needing help, and being able to do more for your clients are not mutually exclusive. While you may not “need help”, but doing better will always result in more commissions, happier clients, more referrals, and repeat business.


“Isn’t it the tenant rep’s job to reach out to me?”

You didn’t get where you are waiting for people to hand things to you I hope. TenSource is a tool for you to proactively market your space to tenants that are actively seeking space such as yours. Marketing doesn’t get more targeted than that! Using the wait-and-see approach (also known as “posting and praying”) will leave you seeing tenants that could have worked for you, completing deals in competing spaces. As a landlord or landlord rep, you need to try to get them into your space as soon as possible. Otherwise they may find a space on their first couple of tours and never even consider your availability.


“I’ve seen your tenant alerts, they never match perfectly”

We send you tenants that match up to the information we have. If your asking rent isn’t shared, we’ll send you tenants with any rent budget. If you don’t tell us “no food” we’re going to send you food uses. If you’d like to improve your matches, you can tell us the specifics about your available space and we’ll get you better results. The easiest way to do this is simply responding to the alert emails we send with “no medical here”, “this space can’t be vented”, or “the asking rent is $160/sf”. If you include those details on your flyers, they will automatically be added as well.

That said, we know some leads won't work. We prefer to send these rather than accidentally not sending you tenant leads that can. For this reason we have liberal buffers placed around the size and asking rents so we don’t ever accidentally not send a tenant that could work for you. When we send these tenants, simply ignore them and wait for the next one. In short, we send you leads that only match your spaces on the periphery, so you can be the final arbiter of whether a tenant is a good match or not.


“The tenants are all broker repped, I’m trying to do a direct deal.”

First off, I’m not sure your landlord will appreciate your jockeying for full commissions at the risk of extended vacancy losses. Second, we get it, direct deals are great. But closing the deal that’s available now isn’t just the best thing for your landlord, but also the best thing for you. Nothing encourages repeat business and referrals then leasing a space faster than expected, and at better deal terms.

Finding more tenants to consider your space is akin to increasing the demand for that particular space. From econ 101 we know that increased demand equals higher prices (for CRE, price isn’t just rent, but also favorable deal terms and shorter vacancy). If you can accomplish this for your landlord, you will get more listings and more opportunities for direct deals in the future.

And if you’re a landlord that doesn’t want to pay a commission, I recommend looking at your books and seeing if the decision to eschew broker-repped tenants is really paying off. I am certain that your vacancy losses are astronomical in comparison to your savings from not paying commissions.

Brokers and landlords: let’s make real estate as close to an efficient market as possible and place tenants into vacancies as quickly as possible. And pay brokers what they’ve earned by reducing friction and inefficiency in the market. Real estate owners and brokers alike will benefit. As will the CRE industry as a whole.

Why TenSource is Important for Landlords: Better ROI from Buildings

Getting more rent out of a building improves your ROI in the most straightforward way. But how can you get more rent from buildings consistently? Rent your vacant space quickly. Nothing hurts revenue like a big chunk of building generating $0/sf over prolonged periods of time.

And vacancy costs in New York are substantial:

$4.3 Billion - Total Vacancy Costs annually for office space in NYC[1]

$2.2 Billion - Total Vacancy Costs annually for retail in NYC[2]

$1.26 Million - Expected Vacancy Loss from a single 20,000 sf Class A office coming on the market[1]

For a 1 Million SF Office Portfolio:
$7.7 Million - Expected vacancy cost per year[1]

$1.3 Million in savings per year by reducing vacancy time by 1 month on average[3]

Aside from retaining tenants to avoid vacancy altogether, the only way to mitigate these losses is to rent your space quickly when they become available.

And there are only 2 effective ways to rent your space faster

  1. Lower the rent (boo!)
  2. More outreach to tenants and tenant reps

Note: Listing space is intentionally being left off because it’s already done by everybody. Listing your space is the bare minimum, not a place to seek competitive advantage.

Despite the best efforts of landlords to retain their tenants, office vacancy still sits at 11% (Q3 2019) . Some amount of tenant turnover is inevitable so meaningful vacancy losses are a part of every portfolio.

Lowering rents is an unattractive option for obvious reasons, but it definitely lowers vacancy. Imagine asking $20/sf for midtown office space; you’d have a 100% occupied building in no time.

But outreach is effective, can be cheap, and you don’t have to suffer lower rents (in fact, outreach can increase demand for your space and therefore increase your effective rental rates). Aside from retaining tenants, and lowering rents, outreach is the only option under your control to consistently keep your vacancy below market average. It actually works by undermining competing landlords and getting tenants before they choose another space.

Think of a typical tenant seeking space in New York. For even the most difficult tenant requirements there are typically at least a handful of spaces in the city that could make sense for them, so this typical tenant probably has at least 20 choices. What if your vacancy is one of them, but before they even see your listing they choose and close on one of the others? That’s a killer for renting your space quickly as that potential tenant is now out of the market, and you don’t know when the next tenant that could work is coming up. Furthermore, new competing spaces are becoming available constantly so there’s no assurance you’ll ever be next in line. You could’ve had a deal but instead you’re sitting on a vacant space stuck at square one. That’s a costly swing of events that better tenant outreach could have prevented.

But not all outreach is created equally. Some outreach is too general and is summarily ignored by tenants and tenant reps. Email blasts for example are rarely clicked (1.77% click rate[4]) and anecdotally you know that nobody reads every single property flyer that is blasted into their inbox.

Other outreach is ineffective because it’s scattershot and doesn’t zero in on the right targets. This is why cold calling and emailing tenants directly more times than not nets zero solid leads in a given afternoon of busywork. Most of the outreach is simply to people who aren’t even looking for space.

Effective outreach is targeted and relevant. Targeted, relevant outreach won’t be ignored, and is actually appreciated (and therefore viewed). This describes TenSource outreach exactly. On TenSource every tenant requirement is currently seeking space, and we know what type of space they’re seeking, how much of it they need, where they’re looking, and more. Using this information we can determine which tenants make the most sense to send your property listings to. And since you’re personally contacting tenant reps with regard to their specific space requirement, they will look at your listing flyer (we boast a 65% flyer click rate, 35x the industry average).

Sending available space information to matching tenants on TenSource is the most targeted form of outreach in the market right now.

TenSource Digital Assistant (TSDA)

Sending your property flyers to each individual matching tenant lead takes time, and time is your most valuable asset. This is why we offer TenSource Digital Assistant, an automated marketing platform that puts your flyers in front of tenant brokers the minute they enter the market with a requirement for similar space. We assign you a digital assistant that emails each and every matching tenant lead with your relevant properties. After a short onboarding where you communicate your listings, and which types of tenants you like, and which ones you don’t, you won’t have to lift a finger again. You’ll get to watch the work get done as we copy you on each personalized email that invites the matching tenant prospects to tour your spaces. Only once a conversation has matured and the tenant rep has shown real interest do you jump in.

TSDA costs $49/property/month and we offer substantial bulk discounts for as low as $9/property. Contact us at TSDA@tensource.com to get started with a 30 day free trial.

TenSource Pro (included w/ TSDA)

If you don’t need the digital assistant service but still want unlimited access to every tenant lead in the database, you can upgrade to TenSource Pro. You get a custom dashboard for each of your available properties where you can view all the matching tenants in an easy-to-use interface. You can also use the Browse All Tenants page to search the entire database and find prospects on your own.

Everytime there is a new tenant added to the database that matches one of your listings, you’ll receive an alert so you can stay on top of the market and never miss a prospect.

Plans start at $79/month/user (which covers all your listings) and we offer bulk discounts.

References:

  1. “Market in Minutes: Manhattan Q3 2019. Savills.
  2. “Vacant retail space has doubled in NYC over 10 years”. New York Post. 9/29/19.
  3. “Manhattan Market Report”. SquareFoot. 2019.
  4. “Email Marketing Benchmarks”. MailChimp. October 2019.