From Positioning to Pricing:

Repositioning a Vacancy

Before
VTS Data

&

After
VTS Data

New Vacancy

During a leasing meeting, Laura, the Leasing Manager, is caught off-guard discovering Modus Global in Wright Tower isn’t renewing their lease. The anchor tenant in the downtown office, Modus Global, leases 70K SF across three floors. She calls all hands on deck to track down relevant information: latest lease terms, relationship context/history, recent communications, and more. Weeks later, the team presents their findings and begins building a strategy to fill the vacancy.

Laura, the Leasing Manager, receives a VTS notification on upcoming expiring leases across the portfolio. Opening the VTS Business Intelligence dashboard, she discovers Wright Tower's anchor tenant, Modus Global, is expiring in three years. They lease 70K SF across three floors. Laura immediately forwards the notification to her team, prioritizing outreach to Modus Global. Shortly after, Laura sees a new comment in VTS: Modus Global won't be renewing their lease.

Already on the back foot, Laura loops in Ajay, the Asset Manager, to assist with the repositioning strategy. Ajay reaches out to several peers gauging which approaches they're seeing in the market. He also forwards the message to Barry, the Broker, to get started on a research report. Barry in turn forwards the email to his firm's research team. This back-and-forth via email adds extra time.

With the VTS platform, Laura understood Modus Global's sentiment and the likelihood of relocation. Laura emails Ajay, the Asset Manager, and the VTS Research Team confirming the upcoming vacancy and opportunity to get started on a repositioning strategy. Ajay sends a note to Barry, the Broker, to supplement the VTS Data study with brokerage research and insights. Both teams immediately take action.

Positioning

A month later, Laura, Ajay, and Barry reconvene to review the brokerage research report. The report uses the Tenants in Market (TIMs) list from regular leasing meetings, quarterly industry reports, employment figures, and other lagging indicators — often sourced via survey — to inform different approaches for repositioning the vacancy. While thorough and standard, the data is anywhere from months to quarters old — providing information on where the market has been versus where it's headed.

Laura, Ajay, and the VTS Research team meet to review the requested data study. Using high-frequency, forward-looking VTS Data, they get granular insight into supply and demand fundamentals in their market — and Wright Tower's submarket — as well as real-time monitoring into the buildings and spaces most attractive to tenants in the market today. The underlying data isn't survey data — it's anonymized and aggregated from the operating software top landlords are using to manage 12B+ SF of commercial real estate.

Based on the considered approaches, the research report lacks a single, concrete conclusion. Due to the rapidly changing fundamentals in the market today, they look to layer in supplemental — and sometimes unconfirmed — market information. This causes a drawn-out strategic discussion, and after losing more precious time, it's decided to backfill the vacancy with a single tenant.

Laura, Ajay, and Barry continue discussing the data study and supplement their insight with the added brokerage research. Based on the considered approaches for this space, and the higher-frequency, real-time insight into the market, the data supports the thesis to split the vacancy into three contiguous spaces. With the help of VTS Data, Laura and Ajay act faster, and with more conviction, in response to the current market dynamics.

Marketing

As Laura prepares to bring the three-floor vacancy to market, she struggles to develop insight into the industry or square footage of tenants in the market today. Based on the TIMs list and additional anecdotal information from her team, she decides on targeting finance and professional services tenants. All this adds time before she's able to start capturing demand.

As Laura prepares to bring the three contiguous spaces to market, the added layer of insight from VTS Data provides visibility into industry composition and tenant square footage in today’s market. This provides quick confidence to target full-floor tenants in the tech industry. Bringing her spaces to market quickly, Laura also captures tenant demand sooner.

Laura struggles to generate in-person tours through Wright Tower. She wants to keep pressure on the market, but can't be positive she's hitting the right brokers in her outreach. Laura deduces broker marketshare of finance and professional services tenants from the TIMs list and calculates a tour conversion, but it's not a reliable figure.

Laura keeps pressure on the market to ensure her three spaces are top-of-mind with key brokers. Receiving regular updates from VTS Data regarding active market demand, she stays abreast broker marketshare and knows firms representing tech companies. Seeing a lower portion of in-person tours coming from those broker teams, Laura identifies actionable insights, ensuring Wright Tower receives as many views and in-person tours as possible.

Pricing

The last 1.5 years proved a challenging leasing environment, so Ajay lacks data points informing pricing on the three-floor vacancy. Even in normal environments, lease comp reporting is delayed by the time it hits the market and specific deal terms are often missing — and now there are even fewer of those reference points.

The last 1.5 years proved a challenging leasing environment, so Ajay lacks data points informing pricing on the three contiguous spaces. With VTS Data, he has real-time data on proposals actively being negotiated today to inform negotiations at Wright Tower. This helps ensure he signs off on the best deal terms possible.

Vacancy Filled

18 months after receiving Modus Global’s vacancy notice, the space still remains empty. Laura and Ajay are just now gaining conviction around repositioning the space to better meet market demand. They finally sign one lease backfilling a portion of the space another ten months later, but the downtime is already double what was originally forecasted.

18 months after receiving notice that Modus Global was going to vacate, Laura and Ajay have executed two leases to backfill the contiguous spaces and are nearing final negotiations for the last one. While there has been some downtime, it's half of what they initially forecasted.

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