This beautiful business park includes 10 2-story buildings with brown brick. Built in 1972, the charming courtyard is just one of the many great features of this property.

Located at 12800-12890 Hillcrest Road in Dallas Texas, the available office suite is 1,145 square feet and includes: two private offices, a waiting room, break room and small storage closet.

Conveniently located near the Lyndon B Johnson freeway, this Dallas office space is perfect for medical usage.

To view this office space listing in detail, click here.

This turn-key, executive New York office space is centrally located in mid-town Manhattan. The available 1,000 square foot office has 5 work stations – great space for start-ups and small businesses.

The rent for this executive suite space includes: office furnishings, utilities, office maintenance, high speed internet and VoIP telephone handsets with a dedicated telephone number.

Located at 1350 Avenue of the Americas in New York, the building features: professional on-site management, security, 24/7 access, conference room access, on-site parking garage, a restaurant with outdoor plaza seating, a movie theatre and much more.

To view this office lease listing, click here.

Located in the Gold Coast, this office building is a perfect home for office or medical users looking for a new space. Located at 1201 North Clark Street in Chicago Illinois, this property has four office suites available for lease. The available office spaces range from 3,673 square feet to 13,084 square feet. To view the available office suites at 1201 North Clark Street, click here.

This first floor of this office building houses some pretty big retailers, including: Jewel, CVS and Walgreens. The Red Line is just steps away, offering commuters convenient access to public transportation.

Want to see more? Click here to view additional Chicago office spaces for lease.

Are you searching for flexible, low cost warehouse space? Search no further, Workspace Fremont offers businesses searching for warehouse space a variety of solutions with month to month lease terms.

Located at 45401 Research Ave, in Fremont CA, Workspace Fremont warehouse solutions include: fenced warehouse space, storage lockers and open warehouse space.

We would like to highlight one listing in particular, a 750 square foot fenced warehouse space. This Fremont warehouse space is ideal for storing business equipment. All warehouse spaces at 45401 Research Ave are serviced by 7 dock level doors and 8 drive-in doors.

Click here to view this listing in detail. To view additional spaces in this building, visit Rofo.com.

This Temecula industrial space features a reception area, a private restroom and a warehouse with an 8×10 roll-up door.

Located at 43114 Blackdeer Loop in Temecula CA, this 1,178 square foot light industrial space offers tenants convenient access to freeways 215 and 79.

Although this space appears to be in an industrial park, nearby dinning options are a short 5 minute drive away. Nearby amenities include: In-N-Out, Sizzler, Sushi House, Winchester Square Shopping Center, Holiday Inn and much more.

To contact the listing owner click here or visit Rofo.com to see all Temecula, CA listings.

Looking for office space in San Jose? The Chantel Building is located at 3880 S. Bascom Avenue in San Jose and offers tenants a charming and relaxing business atmosphere. Currently, the Chantel Building has six office suites available for lease.

One particular office suite we’d like to highlight is suite 115. Located on the ground floor; this space includes a reception area, 5 private offices and a small kitchen.

The Chantel Building is home to accounting, counseling and chiropractic businesses. The buildings’ features include: a parking garage, access to a large conference room, shower facilities, beautiful courtyard setting and convenient access to Highways 85 and 880.

To view suite 115 in detail, click here or watch the short video below.

Marketing your available commercial real estate listings online is a great way to reach potential tenants. As posting property online becomes more commonplace, we find that landlords and brokers are looking for ways to improve their interaction with these potential tenants. Below are some tips we think will help you convert online prospects into paying tenants.

1. Call Them Back!
   The most important first step is to pick up the phone, call the prospect, and encourage them to come and tour your vacancy. Do this as quickly as possible. We have some clients that tout their ability to call each prospect within 5 minutes of receiving the inquiry. Many landlords just email a marketing flyer to the prospect and wait for them to either call back or come by for a tour. There are a lot of space options out there for businesses to choose from, and just emailing a prospect is not enough. The best time to qualify a prospect, if you can’t call them immediately, is either 8-9am or 4-5pm. For additional tips on this topic, check out The Lead Response Management Study.
2. Follow Up with an Email
   If you are unable to connect with a prospect over the phone, email them. For many businesses searching for space, email is the preferred form of communication. A suggested process would be to try a prospect 3 times over the course of 3 work days, if you fail to connect.
3. Email Marketing
   For the prospects you cannot reach over the course of those 3 days, we suggest adding them to your email marketing campaigns. Sending flyers and property updates monthly to prospects that have previously expressed interest in your spaces, is a great way to stay in contact with the prospect.
4. Don’t Negotiate Over the Phone
   Businesses that are searching for available properties online, are often looking to move within a short time frame. We commonly see prospects trying to negotiate lease terms over the phone or by email before touring. It is very important to get a tour set up and meet the prospect before negotiating on price, lease length or tenant improvements.
5. Online Listing Content
   We find that online property listings with detailed information receive higher quality leads. When you provide more information about your available listings, your potential customers are more educated and can determine if the space might be a good fit. The most important details to provide are: price, available square footage, interior build out details, and pictures. If you can provide floor plans and video, you are really differentiating yourself from other available spaces online.

Earlier this month, we wrote a blog post on Things to Consider When Marketing Your Property Online. In this post, we talked briefly about using Paid Search Marketing to attract businesses searching for office space online to your listings. We understand that paid search marketing is no easy task to take on and have provided a few additional tips below to help you get started.

What is Paid Search Marketing?

Paid search marketing is the process of gaining traffic by purchasing ads on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. It is sometimes referred to as CPC (cost-per-click) or PPC (pay-per-click). This unique form of search engine advertising gets your site in the top search results for the keyword terms you target.
 
How does it work?

The search engines display ads in response to search queries. When a user searches for keywords you’ve selected for your ads (ex. San Francisco Office Space), your ad can appear above and next to the organic search results. You pay a certain amount each time someone clicks on your ad; this is why paid ads are referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-click (CPC) advertising.

The position of a keyword-targeted ad on the search results page is calculated by the click thru rate of the ad, the ad’s display URL, the relevance of the keyword and the ad to the search query, along with other factors. The top three ad positions get the highest percentage of clicks.
 
Where You Should Focus Your Paid Search Efforts?

Start with Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter (which includes Bing and Yahoo! Search).

Choosing Keywords

Traditionally marketers bid on one or two term keywords (ex. office space), while searchers type in three or more keywords per search. Three word plus terms are generally the cheapest per click with higher conversion rates (depending on the keyword and the quality of the landing page).

• Add long tail keywords to your account, the phrases individually are unlikely to account for a great deal of searches, but as a whole can provide significant traffic (ex. office for rent in San Jose).
• Here are some additional ways to generate keywords: create lists, keeping your website theme in mind. Research competitor websites and organic listings. Include a search box in your website to find out what customers are searching for.

Writing and Testing Ad Copy
 
It is better not to create ads on a blank canvas, instead consider opening your web browser and enter the search term. This will give you an idea of what creative’s are already being used for a search term.

• Don’t be all things to all people! It is better to create focused, concise and unique propositions in your ads than generic claims.
• Your ad is a window to your site. The message in your ad needs to be consistent with the language on your website.

Paid search marketing is a great way to reach business looking for commercial real estate online. Many well known industry players, such as Regus, or larger landlords such as Irvine Company effectively use paid search to reach potential clients online. We provided a brief overview of paid search marketing above, however there is a lot more involved. As a beginner, we suggest partnering with someone who can help you reach this online audience.

As always we invite your feedback and questions.

Located in downtown Glendale, this luxurious high rise building has over 500 office suites. The building is located at 121 W. Lexington Drive in Glendale and offers tenants access to many great amenities, including an onsite gym, beautiful patios and is within walking distance of retail shops and restaurants.

The lobby level office suite is currently available for lease. This suite includes 5 large windowed rooms, a private patio and 2 private entrances. This Glendale office space is fully furnished, and includes phone and internet connections.

To view the available office suite at 121 W. Lexington Drive in detail, click here.

Below is a press release from San Francisco’s newly appointed mayor. It’s sounds like a bold initiative with real implications for commercial real estate building owners and managers. But is it? There must be something more to this than just entering your energy use into an online tool.

Rofo leases space at one of the few LEED Gold certified office buildings, 100 Montgomery Street in San Francisco. Everything about the building feels normal from a tenants perspective. Typical nice looking lobby, good security, and fast reliable elevators. Nothing is “in your face” about saving the planet. Occasionally the property manager will highlight a recycling initiative and its nice reminder that the landlord took some extra steps to pitch in.

The big question and concern about greening a space or a building is the upfront cost. Is the landlord going to take a financial hit and push rents up? And by doing so are you pushing tenants out. The city has been apparently ‘battling’ to keep Twitter in San Francisco and offering concessions/incentives (I know nothing about that real estate deal but I’ve been involved in commercial real estate leases as a broker where cities compete for a headquarters deal and can honestly say its not about the tax breaks. Its about the real estate.)

So cities have a big challenge and competing interests. Personally, as a tenant, I like the green building initiatives. But I also like keeping the rent competitive.

Would love to hear to your thoughts on this as a broker, tenant or building owner.

MAYOR LEE SIGNS LANDMARK LEGISLATION TO GREEN EXISTING COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS
New City Code Improves Energy Efficiency in Existing Buildings, Protects the Environment and Creates Green Jobs

San Francisco, CA—Mayor Edwin M. Lee today signed landmark green building legislation that will improve energy efficiency in existing buildings, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, lower energy costs, and create green jobs. Passed last week by the Board of Supervisors, the Existing Commercial Building Energy Performance Ordinance will require owners of existing non-residential buildings to determine how much energy each building consumes, and to make that information public on an annual basis. The new city code will also require commercial buildings over 10,000 square feet to conduct energy efficiency audits every five years in order to help the building owners and managers optimize building efficiency and utility savings.

“San Francisco needs to increase the energy and resource efficiency of existing buildings if we are going to meet our aggressive greenhouse gas reduction targets,” said Mayor Lee. “This new green building code will educate building owners about what they need to do to save energy and money, and boost our local green economy.”

“San Francisco continues to provide visionary leadership to protect our environment,” said Board of Supervisors President David Chiu. “Making our commercial buildings more energy efficient shows we can work together creatively to make real progress.”

Energy is one of the biggest expenses of building ownership, and will be an even greater financial burden for owners in the future as energy prices escalate. Buildings, which account for about 70 percent of the electricity consumed in the U.S., could be made up to 50 percent more energy efficient with currently available products and services.

Under the new law, Chapter 20 of the San Francisco Environment Code, building owners will be required to benchmark the energy use of their buildings using a free online tool provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the results of which will be filed annually with the city. The code also requires building owners to conduct energy audits, starting with commercial properties larger than 50,000 square feet starting in October 2011, and then phase in so that by 2013, the rules would apply to all commercial properties 10,000 square feet or larger.

The Ordinance codifies the recommendations of the Existing Commercial Building Task Force, which then-Mayor Gavin Newsom convened to identify ways the city could work in concert with the private sector to improve the energy and resource efficiency of existing commercial buildings in San Francisco. The Task Force, similar to the one that developed recommendations for new construction, was comprised of 18 members of San Francisco’s building ownership, developer, financial, architectural, engineering, and construction communities, who the Mayor selected for their knowledge of the building industry and commitment to San Francisco’s long-term sustainability.

“San Francisco currently offers energy efficiency audits for businesses through our Energy Watch program, and we have learned that up to 70 percent of business that have an audit will take action and conduct a retrofit,” said Melanie Nutter, Director of San Francisco Environment. “We expect this Ordinance will deliver similar returns with existing buildings, which could lead to a 50 percent reduction in commercial building energy use within 20 years.”

Today’s signing ceremony was held at the San Francisco offices of Adobe, located in a 1905 building on the national historic registry that has been upgraded to LEED Platinum, the highest level of environmental performance recognized by the U.S. Green Building Council. The building employs extensive energy efficiency technologies, securing an Energy Star rating of 98.

“Adobe is committed to being a responsible corporate citizen in the communities where its employees live and work,” said Randall H. Knox, III, Senior Director of Global Workplace Solutions at Adobe. “Our company takes a hands-on approach to resource conservation and sustainability, achieving Energy Star ratings and US Green Building Council LEED certifications at many of our locations. It’s our hope that this new City of San Francisco law will inspire building owners to be more informed about energy consumption and take action.”