Hi Bruce,
I wanted to tell you about a recent experience I had.
We helped a business client negotiate with her existing Landlord for an extension to her lease and when we were unable to arrive at terms acceptable to both parties, we pursued a new lease with a different Landlord.
We reached terms that we understood were acceptable to the client, only to have the client walk away. The client then went back to her existing Landlord and endeavored to complete those negotiations without us. However, the new lease was emailed to our offices by the Brokerage representing the Landlord for our client to initial and sign.
After several attempts to contact our former client, we finally located her on holiday in the South Pacific. We offered to forward the new lease to her for execution by her. We continued to help her even though we no longer represented her and would not get paid for our efforts.
The new Offer to Lease (OTL) was sent to her via email: she simply had to sign and return it before the irrevocable time and date and we would get it to the Landlord’s Agent.
Several days passed and the Agent for the Landlord contacted us looking for the documents. Again, we contacted our former client and requested that she sign and return the documents. Finally with the irrevocable date looming, we sent more emails and made additional phone calls.
A couple of days after the irrevocable time and date, she finally sent the documents to us—not only was the OTL late, a handful of pages were missing. Nevertheless, we forwarded the partial OTL to the Landlord’s Agent.
The Landlord’s Agent contacted us to inform us that he needed a complete OTL and that this transaction was in jeopardy. This message was conveyed to our former client with renewed urgency. She told us that she would sort this out with her Landlord directly.
Within 24 hours, we received a cc of an email from the Landlord to our former client that he had leased out the subject space to another party and that the OTL was now null and void because the irrevocable time and date had passed.
She now has 30 days to find new space. In commercial leasing, unlike residential tenancies in Ontario, there is no protection—you can be served notice to vacate at the end of your lease and that’s it, you’re done.
The reason we became REALTORs, is to serve clients. We do dozens of deals a year and we take a lot of courses to get and keep our licenses in Ontario. Who is likely to do a better job—someone who negotiates maybe a couple of leases every ten years or an experienced REALTOR? Draw your own conclusions. A day in the life of a REALTOR.
Cheers,
Steve Murray, REALTOR, Partners Advantage GMAC Real Estate, Brokerage, 1445 Stittsville Main Street, Ottawa ON K2S 1S9. Cell: 613-720-3674 Office: 613-836-3378 Email: stevemurray@partnersadvantage.ca
Notes:
1. Names and other details have been changed to protect the identity of persons involved.
2. I have always believed that you should focus on your core competencies. When we brought back the Ottawa Senators to play in the NHL in 1992, we identified our core competencies this way: drafting and all player personnel decisions, relations with season ticket holders and all corporate sponsorships. Pretty much everything else was contracted out—arena management, security, hot dog vending (food and beverage concessions), parking lot operations, radio and television broadcasting, etc. We figured that professional service providers knew a lot more about selling hot dogs and beer than we did and that we would end up making MORE money by letting others do what they do well and pay us a percentage of sales. I think this idea has even greater relevance today than it did 16 years ago.
Dr. Bruce