Looking for Advice
What's up Reddit. 

I'm a financial analyst for a large public REIT. We typically lease retail shopping centers and mixed-use projects, but we have some old office space in our portfolio.  This office space often gets ignored from our leasing guys because they have bigger fish to fry. 

Today my SVP asked if I wanted to lease ~80,000 SF of office space on the side.  I said absolutely, as this will be a great learning experience. 

So, to my fellow redditors:   what advice do you have for someone just starting out and doing it on the side?

I would also love some tips on advertising, marketing, and technology that I should be aware of. 

Thanks!
[{"id": "dh0dhi1", "text": "1. Strategize: How to best fill/lease the space (i.e: how to sub-divide the space, who do you want to service, the market, etc.)\n\n2. Technology: Put the offering on CoStar &amp; LoopNet\n\n3. Generate a call-list &amp; email list of likely potential tenants\n\n4. You should be open to co-operating with leasing brokers. Contact commercial firms who offer this service and make them aware of the availabilities. \n\nTip: finding an anchor tenant (national brand) to sign early can help lease up remaining spaces and local operators will find comfort in leasing within the same facility. Many national brands list this location criteria on their websites.\n\n\n\n", "replies": [{"id": "dh1t7wr", "text": "Why is an anchor tenant important? Is it because they attract customers in the area?", "replies": [{"id": "dh1udbd", "text": "Exactly, they have a larger draw and will bring exposure to the shopping center", "replies": [{"id": "dh1vsgv", "text": "Makes sense - thank you!", "replies": [], "depth": 4}], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "dh137sz", "text": "Have you ever been a junior broker on an office leasing assignment? Trying to lease 80,000 SF as your first project would be a serious learning curve!", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "dh1p78z", "text": "As for your marketing and tech needs, let's talk about how BlockVue can help you by creating virtual reality solutions for this office space.  We can create top of the line walkthroughs using a combination of 3D renderings and actual images of the surrounding area.  winston@blockvue.com ", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "dh8rm5c", "text": "Other posts have very helpful info. I'll add some other thoughts as well:\n\nThis could be a really fulfilling experience for you. Your organization already has a process in place for leasing space. There is likely an existing relationship with a brokerage firm (CBRE, Colliers, CW, JLL, etc.).\n\nPing your in-house leasing team and ask which firm they have an existing relationship with. You'll want to call their broker and have a candid convo with them about what you're doing. They're incentivized to lease this space too so should be willing to help you.\n\nSeriously lots of work to do:\n- get floor plans\n- research the market and figure out what asking rents are\n- work with your project management team to understand the needs of the space\n- collaborate with broker to create marketing collateral\n- broker will market, but as others said use costar and loopnet; if you're on LinkedIn, use that as well\n- when (not if) you start seeing interest, you will be walking the space with prospective tenants; make sure you really understand this space\n- you find a tenant - will need to create test fits to show them that their needs can be met in this space\n- need to work with GC to figure out cost of building out the space\n- how much TI are you going to provide (market research)?\n- come up with a timeline\n- work with broker and in-house legal on creating an LOI for tenant\n- once LOI signed, will need to draft a lease and will require negotiating which could take a couple/few weeks\n- off to the races to get the space built out within the timeframe stipulated in the lease", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]