Occupier Leasing Software is Northwest Tenant Group’s Competitive Edge
Last Updated on April 3, 2023 by Morgan Beard
Life Before Occupier:
- Close to missing a client’s critical date.
- Leases live in a digital document folder system.
- Big brokerages have an in-house technology advantage.
Life After Occupier:
- Proactive critical date notification for clients.
- All lease data is a quick search or sort away.
- Gives boutique brokers, like myself, a competitive edge.
Results:
- I’ve won client business pitching with Occupier.
INDUSTRY: Brokerage | MANAGES: More than $400 million in real estate assets
Northwest Tenant Group is a boutique brokerage firm based in Portland, Oregon. After several years at a global commercial real estate services firm, Stanford Scriven founded his boutique brokerage shop. The ethos of Northwest Tenant Group is tenant representation with a consultative, service-oriented approach to brokering. Stanford Scriven spent his career representing the interest of northwest companies, proudly managing over $400 million in real estate budgets for companies ranging from startups to the Fortune 150.
After winning new client business against a national brokerage, Stanford Scriven found Northwest Tenant Group’s competitive edge: Occupier. He has since moved all his clients onto the Occupier platform. As a boutique brokerage, Northwest Tenant Group knows that improving its processes and servicing clients in a consultative manner is the future of commercial real estate and lease administration.
Winning clients with intuitive lease administration software
“I’ve won business competing with big national firms because of Occupier’s capabilities,” says Stanford Scriven. The national firm was pitching this tenant using a technical and clunky lease administration software, and I came in with Occupier. Lease administration software is one of those tools that should be intuitive, easy to use, and ultimately save your tenants and brokers time. “Occupier delivers just that.”
According to Scriven, “one of the coolest features of Occupier is that you have an in-house abstraction team. That was the selling point that pushed me over the edge with Occupier. Tools are great, but there is tons of effort that goes into abstracting details into software. It’s not just a lot of work. It is highly skilled work to read through the technicalities of a lease contract. At a big firm, you either do that yourself or have your corporate services team do it for you. Not only does Occupier offer lease abstraction services, but the off-the-shelf lease administration software in combination with lease abstraction is incredible.”
Lease Abstraction is truly the first step to automating the management of your lease portfolio via software. If the data is stale and inaccurate at the onset then your day-to-day leasing operations are at risk. For Scriven, life before Occupier included tracking “every lease in a PDF in my folder system. I could go and hunt for those files… Or I can go to Occupier and just pull up every extracted clause in a few seconds. And do things like look at all the sublease language for a particular client across their lease portfolio. Occupier creates a quick reference to all leases.”
The commercial real estate future is tech-enabled
Commercial real estate has historically relied on legacy solutions. The digital age has propelled Lease Administrators, Real Estate Managers and Commercial Brokers into the proptech future.
According to Scriven, “the fact that Occupier has the capabilities and robustness of a global lease administration software platform, yet is also intuitive and simple is such a value-add. Ten years ago, the big brokerage firms had all the tech and all the value. Nowadays, you’re seeing 3rd party software rival and surpass those legacy softwares. Occupier is the latest example of how 3rd party software is surpassing proprietary software and providing a better client experience, which is ultimately giving boutique brokers, like Northwest Tenant Group a competitive edge in order to win business.”
Commercial real estate tenants are enjoying the update to their tech-stack as well. “I was on a call with a Head of Real Estate recently, and he was running his meeting with Occupier shared on screen, and going through these leases which used to live in a spreadsheet. And one of the local managers typed in and said “I used to help manage this spreadsheet, and it was horrible. This looks like an amazing next step for our company!” If you really care about your clients, you should always be seeking out ways to improve their processes.
Moving from transactional to service-oriented brokering
It’s become clear to Scriven, that “the transactional side of tenant-rep brokering used to be 80% of the role and in today’s landscape it’s roughly 30% of the role. My day is more focused on supporting the client on their workplace or retail strategy and how their space fulfills their strategic demands.”
Ultimately, the broker is stepping away from the gatekeeper of commercial real estate information and into the role of consultant of that information. Clients can easily find properties online independently. Where the tenant-rep broker comes into play is advising on the pros and cons of a site. Service-oriented brokers manage the communications between the client and the landlord and advise the tenant on market comps, proposals work entertaining and negotiations with the aid of legal counsel.
“We use tools like Occupier to keep our commercial clients apprised on their lease data. This service-oriented movement fundamentally changes the broker and tenant relationship. Good brokers are bringing value-added services to their clients. And, Occupier helps us to facilitate that value. Personally, I’ve won business using Occupier – the ROI is clear.”
