James Gage here hoping you and yours had a great holiday season. As many of you know, my faithful blog subscribers, I had blogged about what I believe is the next financial tsunami – “Commercial Real Estate” ! Needless to say, I received many e-mails asking me to expand on my comments and my take on the best way to approach commercial real estate. Not only will I expand, but I will give you my take on commercial and residential leases.
As far as commercial real estate goes I wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole, unless I could use a lease option! Why? As most of know a lease option has many strategies within a strategy ( for more info on lease options visit my website http://www.JGage.com ) ; remember, if the deal doesn’t workout the way we envisioned it, we can exit without financial harm. The last article I read forecast business closures to accelerate into the 1st and 2nd quarter of 2009 – you do the math on what that translates into vacant commercial properties.
Hopefully we are all on the same page as far as commercial real estate and why we should stay away from it unless we use lease options. That being said, now is a tremendous time to renegotiate leases whether commercial or residential due to the down turn in the economy with your landlords.
In fact I was speaking to a friend of mine who is looking to open a business in the next 30 days in Virginia Beach, VA. Guess what? He was able to get a rent 45% under fair market value and 6 months free rent !!! Talk about landlords being hungry…
So the morally of the story is ask for everything, expect nothing and you will be surprised what you get.
Be well,
James Gage
