27 September 2022

HOW TO SELL COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE, FAST!

Introduction:

The field of commercial real estate is probably undergoing more change than any other sector of the real estate business. But for the agent who commits to a solid virtual property marketing platform for each commercial property they take to market, there is tremendous room to connect with buyers and outpace the competition.

Your greatest asset as a commercial real estate agent over next the few years will be your ability to use visuals to communicate the potential of a space. This also holds true for residential sales, but the nature of your visual storytelling will differ dramatically in the commercial field. 

This week, London-based firm cfi.co (a print and online resource that reports on business, economics, and finance) published an analysis concluding that proptech/virtual property marketing will be the “fuel” that keeps the commercial real estate market going through uncertain times. 

The reasons it cited were:

• that proptech, like our Commercial Virtual Staging, 3D Floor Plans, and 360° Virtual Tours, are effective ways to market commercial properties.
• that “the digitization of commercial real estate has been slow to develop” leaving a great opportunity for commercial agents who fully embrace this form of marketing.
• that “[y]ounger generations of commercial real estate consumers are demanding greater tech capacity from brokers and landlords for the sake of comfort and transparency.”

It's likely going to take a little more 'sweat' to sell commercial real estate in these early days after the pandemic. But those agents who put the effort in will be well-positioned to emerge as industry leaders. 

We say, work smarter not harder!  Let us do a large part of the sweating for you. Commercial investors are spending less time inside potential new properties, so a property's online experience/digital presentation has never been so important. 

Fortunately, this is our specialty! Here are some ways to use our technology to keep buyers buying. 

Custom Floor Plan Templates are a great way to make commercial properties jump off the page. This under-utilized form of virtual commercial property marketing is ideal for agents or developers who want their project to make an immediate splash with prospective buyers.

Commercial Virtual Staging: A Great Way To Showcase Leaseability

Leaseability is generally the most sought-after quality of a commercial space. As an agent selling a commercial property (especially an empty building), your foremost task is to demonstrate to prospective buyers that the space can appeal to a wide variety of tenants. 

Unlike with the sale of residential property, where the use of a space will more or less remain the same (ie. a place for a person to live), the scope of use for a commercial space can vary massively.  

The agent who can bring the potential (actually, the many potentials) of a space to life in the mind of potential buyers will be well-positioned for success in the commercial field. 

A great way to do so, with very little outlay on the part of the agent, is to leverage the speed and flexibility of Commercial Virtual Staging.

Commercial Virtual Staging is an affordable way to communicate this vision, and our technology can transform images of your empty commercial spaces into how they might appear as functioning businesses. This is a case where a picture can truly be worth a thousand words - and, in the case of a completed deal, well over a million dollars. 

To sell commercial property these days, you have to be able to demonstrate different uses for the same space. Our Commercial Virtual Staging service can convert an empty space into almost any imaginable workplace.

The beauty of these visuals is that they are not only effective in attracting the attention of potential landlords. But they can be reused by landlords to attract a diverse set of potential tenants to a property. 

Tanya Cheung, senior marketing manager at Avison Young’s Vancouver office, has spoken publicly about the 'invaluable' nature of virtual campaigns when attracting major clients.  As she said to Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper:

‘When you present digital visualization tools with research data, that’s the winning combo.’”

360 Virtual Tours:  Immersion + Interaction = Emotion

“Experiencing fine detail and finishing touches on a virtual walkthrough can evoke that elusive, key-to-a-lease quality: Emotion.” 

Such is the conclusion of the above-cited Globe and Mail article. And, as anyone involved in the sale of real estate will tell you, the intangible force of emotion remains paramount in the sale of any property.

Of all the tools in the virtual property marketing toolkit, the 360° Virtual Tour is probably the most capable of eliciting an emotional response to a property. Yet for all this potential, it can still be difficult to find examples of commercial MLS listings that include Virtual Tours for the properties they advertise.  

It's hard to say why this is. Not only are Virtual Tours proven winners in both commercial and residential marketing, but it has never been easier (or less expensive) to film one.

In a Recent Post, our co-founder Brad Filliponi took the ultra-low-cost Trisio Lite VR 2 into the field to shoot a Virtual Tour (the camera retails for around $400 USD, though you can receive an additional 15% off the sale price if you use the coupon code BOXBROWNIE and purchase the camera HERE).

To sell a commercial property, you're first going to have to earn the commercial listing over your many eager competitors. One way to do so is to acquire a 360° camera and start including this feature with each property you list. 

Whether a commercial space is furnished and occupied, empty, underperforming, or even unbuilt, the more you can digitally present value, the more buyers you will attract.

This phenomenon became abundantly clear with residential properties during the pandemic. Now, with more younger buyers emerging in the commercial sector, Virtual Tours are becoming more and more imperative in the marketing of such properties. 

From mom-and-pop butcher shops to giant commercial headquarters, your digital marketing must convey the 'feel' of a place. The self-guided, fully immersive Virtual Tour remains the best way to accomplish this in the digital realm. 

If You Virtually Build It, Buyers Will Come

Strangely, though Virtual Tours remain scarce on the commercial scene, their counterpart, the 3D Render Tour (which is basically a 360° Virtual Tour for unbuilt properties) has become the most essential marketing device for mid-construction or pre-construction commercial projects. 

The logic is the same for Virtual Tours: such digital walkthroughs inspire and elicit emotion. 

Without a 3D Render it is almost impossible to make a potential buyer seriously interested in what appears to be a construction site, or worse, a stretch of vacant land that will soon be a construction site.

Even static 3D Renders, like these interior and exterior portrayals of an unbuilt car dealership, can work wonders toward conveying the future grandeur of a project that might be little more than an architectural blueprint.  These static impressions of a future dream, are great on streetfront billboards outside construction sites, all forms of print media, and even, of course, the digital realms of social media and MLS pages.

We are constantly innovating our CGI technology to ensure we deliver the most stunning product on the market today. This CGI tech is where reality blends into the metaverse, and when it comes to eliciting emotion in a property, there is nothing like our 360° CGI Render Tours. 

We employ this same technology in our Virtual Renovation services as well, which makes it equally possible to furnish prospective buyers with a refreshed vision of an existing brick-and-mortar space.

On a smaller scale, our static Interior and External 3D Renders are what make a pedestrian stop on the pavement outside a building site and experience that moment of awe towards the end product of a development project.

The beauty of the static 3D Render is that it works on all platforms of real estate marketing. From outdoor billboards to presentation office literature, to larger print campaigns, to all digital aspects of the online world. If you are serious about attracting interest to projects that aren't yet fully completed, remember: renders render real estate sold!

Use Proptech To Propel You Past Your Commercial Real Estate Competitors

It takes only a rapid glance at the listings offered on commercial MLS sites to realize how the caliber of visual marketing lags far behind that of residential MLS pages. 

The great irony here is that commercial properties often fetch much higher prices than residential listings. Yet the commercial real estate marketing standard seems to be consistently lower. 

Even the most basic fundamentals like Image Enhancement (to ensure that the property is presented in its best possible light) are often absent from commercial listings.

Even the most straightforward and inexpensive edit like our $1.60 USD Image Enhancement service can make a huge difference in commercial property presentation. Yet a brief look at MLS sites reveals that many agents are not even taking this step.

If you are a savvy commercial agent, you will immediately identify the tremendous advantage that's tucked away inside the fact that commercial digital marketing remains years behind its residential counterpart. 

Virtual Staging, Virtual Tours, 3D Floor Plans, and professional quality images are fast becoming the norm on the residential scene, and this makes it more challenging for agents in the residential field to make their properties stand out from the crowd.

This is not yet the case for commercial real estate. Commercial agents who put in the extra effort to make their listings as eye-catching as possible will easily and immediately distinguish themselves as leaders in their field. And from this small bit of extra effort, big dividends are sure to follow. 

SIGN UP with BoxBrownie.com today and we will make all your commercial listings sparkle!

 

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