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Five assignments, start to finish
Each one led with a constraint that had nothing to do with rate: pallet height, conference room usage, a rent roll error, a utility lead time, an asking price nobody wanted to revisit.
- Assignments shown
- 5
- Property types
- 4
- Practices
- 4
- Figures
- Sample
01
A regional distributor outgrew its building nineteen months early
- Industrial, tenant representation
- Eagan and Airport South
- 112,000 SF
Food and beverage distributor, 210 employees
The constraint. Volume growth put the company at pallet capacity nineteen months before its lease expired, with a landlord unwilling to release it early and no adjacent space in the building.
- 1Modelled the real requirement first: 14,800 pallet positions at five high in a narrow aisle system, which ruled out every building under 30 feet clear regardless of square footage.
- 2Surveyed 26 buildings across airport south and the eastern corridor, of which nine met the clear height and only four met clear height, dock count and available date together.
- 3Negotiated a lease assignment on the existing building with an incoming tenant we sourced, which removed the double rent exposure that was blocking the whole decision.
- 4Ran the four finalists to a simultaneous request for proposal and took three rounds of counters on rate, allowance and commencement.
- Clear height secured
- 32 feet
- Overlap rent avoided
- 11 months
- Dock doors
- 18
- Term
- 7 years
They told us in the first meeting that square footage was the wrong number to be shopping on. That reframing saved us from signing a building we would have outgrown again.
02
A law firm halved its footprint without losing a conference room
- Office, tenant representation
- Minneapolis CBD
- 19,200 RSF
Professional services firm, 96 staff
The constraint. The firm occupied 38,000 rentable square feet on a floor plan built for 1998 and wanted to cut cost without reducing client-facing space or partner offices.
- 1Counted actual room usage over six weeks rather than accepting the stated requirement: four of the eleven conference rooms were used less than twice a month.
- 2Built a programme around six conference rooms of varied size, 28 partner offices, and a workstation count sized to a 1.4 to 1 desk ratio for support staff.
- 3Compared three towers and two North Loop conversions on gross occupancy cost per usable square foot rather than on face rate, which moved the ranking.
- 4Negotiated a 96 dollar per square foot improvement allowance against a build-out priced at 104, and took the difference in free rent.
- Footprint reduction
- 49%
- Conference rooms
- 6, from 11
- Improvement allowance
- $96 per SF
- Term
- 10 years
We were braced for a fight about offices. Instead we spent the time arguing about how often we really used the small conference rooms, which turned out to be the honest question.
03
A grocery anchored centre sold at a cap rate the ownership did not believe
- Retail, investment sales
- Southwest metro
- 64,400 SF, 11 tenancies
Family partnership, second generation
The constraint. Three partners wanted out, two wanted to hold, and nobody trusted the value opinion they had been given by a broker who had also offered to buy it.
- 1Audited the rent roll against the leases and found 3,100 square feet being billed at the wrong recovery percentage, which had suppressed reported net operating income for four years.
- 2Reconciled three years of operating expenses and collected estoppels from all eleven tenancies before the asset went out.
- 3Marketed confidentially for four weeks to local private capital, two regional syndicators and a 1031 buyer inside a 45 day identification window.
- 4Ran a dated call for offers, then best and final with the top three, weighted on deposit structure and financing contingency as well as price.
- Offers at call for offers
- 7
- Net operating income corrected by
- $41,000
- Days to close from contract
- 38
- Deposit hard at
- Day 21
The rent roll error alone changed the number by more than we had been arguing about for a year. It should have been caught by us, not by them.
04
A device manufacturer built to suit after the power study came back
- Industrial, site selection and build to suit
- Plymouth and Maple Grove
- 78,000 SF build to suit
Medical device contract manufacturer, 140 employees
The constraint. The company needed 2,500 amp service and a clean room envelope. Every existing building that had the power lacked the floor flatness, and every building with the floor lacked the service.
- 1Confirmed with the utility that upgrading service at the two viable existing buildings carried a fourteen and a nineteen month lead time respectively, which broke the schedule.
- 2Screened four municipalities on entitlement timeline, truck routing and outdoor storage rules before selecting a site.
- 3Ran state and municipal incentive conversations in parallel with site control rather than after it.
- 4Structured a fifteen year lease with a developer, with commencement tied to certificate of occupancy and a liquidated damages schedule for delay.
- Electrical service delivered
- 2,500 amp
- Site control to occupancy
- 23 months
- Municipalities screened
- 4
- Lease term
- 15 years
The utility lead time was the whole decision and nobody else had asked the question. We would have signed a building and then waited a year for power.
05
A 38 percent vacant office building leased up in fourteen months
- Office, landlord representation
- West End and Golden Valley
- 104,000 RSF building
Regional owner, single asset
The constraint. The building had sat at 38 percent vacancy for two years with a prior broker, asking a rate that had not moved since the ownership bought it in 2019.
- 1Priced to the comparable set rather than to the basis: a 2.75 dollar reduction in the asking rate, presented with the seven competing availabilities that justified it.
- 2Spent 84,000 dollars on three speculative suites at 3,400 to 5,900 square feet, because the tour conversion rate on finished space in this corridor runs several times that of cold shell.
- 3Canvassed 240 tenants in the corridor with expiries inside 24 months, by hand, over eleven weeks.
- 4Rewrote the marketing package to lead with parking ratio, load factor and suite sizes, which is what tenants actually filter on.
- Occupancy at month 14
- 91%
- Leases signed
- 9
- Speculative suites built
- 3
- Asking rate adjustment
- -$2.75 per SF
The first meeting was not comfortable. They told us the rate was wrong and showed us why. The second year proved them right.
The rent roll error alone changed the number by more than we had been arguing about for a year. It should have been caught by us, not by them.
About these figures
Every client, building, figure and outcome on this page is an illustrative sample created for a demonstration website. They are written the way real case studies read so that the layout and the content system can be judged properly, but none of them describes a real transaction.
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