Renting out your commercial property

I'm planning to build a website making it easier to list retail, offices or industrial property for lease with multiple agents, and only the one who actually finds you a good tenant gets the leasing fee. Do you think this would be useful, or do you prefer to let just one preferred agent do it by themselves?
If people here have tried leasing properties both with one agent, and with multiple agents, which seemed to work better?

 

@FullHouse - have you read the PSBA Act and the regulations? Have you worked in leasing to understand the process?

Leasing fees aren't paid for by the website.

Both exclusive and multi listing strategies can work but it's a judgment call.

 

Leasing fees are paid for by the landlord.
What I mean is that, there are two main ways to lease a property with an agent- 1. Eclusively, meaning only one agent is leasing the property, which they do both with online advertising, and by recommending the property to prospective tenants they know are looking for something similar eg a 500sqm office in Pyrmont.
Or 2. With an open agreement, meaning they can appoint multiple agents, the idea being that one agent may only know a 3 potential tenants looking for a 500sqm Pyrmont office, but another agent might know a different 3 potential tenants so whoever is successful gets paid.
My idea is to make it easier for landlords to show agents they would be willing to give them an open agreement, so whenever an agent shows a client a 300sqm office in pyrmont and the client says 'it's too small do you have anything 500sqm' the agent doesn't have to say 'not now I'll let you know when I get one', they can just check online for a suitable open listing and say 'yes I do', and arrange an inspection time.
Scott, as an agent do you think this would be valuable, or would you prefer to concentrate on your exclusives more instead?

 

I would imagine that most commercial agents prefer exclusive agreements only to maintain their relationships with their clients.

You need to do some real market research specifically with commerical landlords and agents. Collect the data and decide if it would be a worthwhile endeavour.

If you can't get the agents on board then it won't work.

 

Exclusive is the preference however some agents that I know (and occasionally trust), will do conjunction deals - they will even offer it openly to other agents rather than be linked to an agent of the lessor's choice. This way, the agent maintains control of the deal.

 

My clients would not use it

 

I think this is a good idea
All my commercial leasing i have used non exclusive leasing agents (current commercial rentals $2.7m pa net plus gst)

 

Good Luck.... I've seen a half dozen websites come and go over the past few years....very well funded ones and ones that have supposedly had industry body support.

All (most) of the agents in my area (Lower North Shore) offer conjunctions already. I get emails from all major agencies on the first of every month listing their properties, the fee offered and any personal incentives. Most agents do the right thing, the ones that don't, don't last long.
I offer conjunctions on most of my listings and one owner is offering a $5000 personal incentive in addition to the 100% full scale of fees.
Sorry, but imho your website idea really isn't much of an incentive for agencies to subscribe and therefore will be difficult to have enough listings to generate the unique visitors.

...and we all prefer to have exclusive listings (or be appointed as coordinating agent on multi tenancy properties)

 

Thanks for the feedback Beano! Thanks also Scott, Chilliblue & Nick - I'm also contacting agents directly for their thoughts but commercial property owners are harder to contact!
Do any other commercial landlords have an opinion on this (good or bad)