10 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Commercial Real Estate Broker, and What to Listen For

Questions 1 to 4: the track record and the team you would get

• 1. Which three tenants near our headcount did you place in the past two years, and may we call them? Listen for names, neighborhoods and sizes. The dodge is a list of famous clients ten times your size.
• 2. When did you last advise a client to take less space or a shorter term? A broker's fee usually grows with rent and term, so a ready example shows advice that ran against the broker's own pay.
• 3. Who joins our weekly call, and how many searches is that person carrying? Listen for a name and a number. The dodge is "our whole team supports every client."
• 4. Who negotiates the letter of intent, and can we meet them before we commit? A strong answer puts that person in the room.

Questions 5 and 6: where the floors come from

• 5. Can you send three to five floors that fit our brief, with addresses and asking rents, within a few days? This is the question most people skip, and the only one answered with work instead of words. The floors below, sized for about 40 people, show what a good answer looks like. The dodge is "sign first."
• 6. What was the last sublease or unadvertised floor you found for a client, and how did you hear of it? Listen for a specific story. The dodge is a claim of access to everything.

Questions 7 and 8: how offers and buildout costs get compared

• 7. May we see a proposal comparison from a past search, with the client's name removed? A strong answer is a single sheet with every landlord offer converted to effective rent: free rent, the allowance, escalations and the term all priced in. A sheet sorted by asking rent is the dodge in document form.
• 8. At what point do you bring in a contractor's estimate? Before the lease is the right answer, with a test fit on the finalist floors, because the allowance should be sized against a real number. "After signing" means negotiating the allowance blind.

Questions 9 and 10: conflicts, pay and what follows the lease

• 9. Does your pay differ from one building on our list to another, and would you show us a floor where you earn less? Listen for written disclosure of who else the firm works for, building by building, and a plain statement of who pays it.
• 10. Once the lease is signed, what do you still do for us? A strong answer covers the buildout, because the schedule and the landlord's approvals rest on what was negotiated. The dodge is a handshake at signing.

Scoring the ten answers across two or three firms

Put the same ten questions to two or three firms and ask for the answers in writing. Written answers can be laid side by side, and a firm that declines to write down how it is paid has told you something. How to choose a tenant rep broker explains the tests behind the questions.

Nomad's own answers, briefly: on your search we work for you; we also offer agency leasing and owner representation, so put question 9 to us; and in most transactions the landlord pays the broker fee.