Commercial Real Estate Brokerages, Tested by Where Their Space Comes From

Three sources a value-minded team's shortlist should draw on

• Listed direct floors. The visible market: space a landlord is advertising, leased straight from the owner. It is the easiest to find and the most compared.
• Subleases and lease takeovers. Floors from companies that shrank, moved or were acquired. They are often already built and furnished, and the term is whatever remains on the original lease. The sublease playbook covers what to check.
• Floors not yet marketed. A landlord often knows a tenant is leaving months before a listing appears. Brokers who talk to that landlord regularly hear about it first.

No source is better in itself. A shortlist built from all three simply has more ways to hit your number.

Two inventory questions to put to every brokerage

• How do you hear about subleases and unlisted floors? A real answer describes relationships: the landlords and brokers the firm speaks to, and how often. A thin answer names a listings database.
• How many of your recent tenant deals came from that kind of space? Ask for a count and one or two examples, with client names removed if need be.

Be wary of the opposite failure as well. Unlisted space is not always there to be found, and nobody can promise it. A brokerage that sells itself on secret inventory is making a claim you cannot check until it is too late.

Reading a shortlist for where the brokerage really looked

The list a firm sends is a record of its search. Four patterns are worth a question.

• One landlord dominates. It may be a coincidence of your brief, or the firm may be close to that owner.
• Every floor is the firm's own listing. Then you are looking at its book, not at the market.
• No sublease appears. For a team seeking value, that usually means nobody checked.
• Asking rents are missing. A shortlist without prices cannot be compared and should be sent back.

Each has an innocent explanation. A firm that gives it without bristling has passed.

What Nomad's own book is, and where a search goes beyond it

Our book is a curated set of Manhattan floors, each published with its address, its size and, wherever the landlord has released one, its asking rent. Every available floor is on one page. It is not the whole city, and we do not present it that way.

A search we run for you starts from your brief and goes past our book, to other firms' listings, to subleases and to landlords we know. On your search, we work for you. Nomad also offers agency leasing and owner representation. If a floor on your list is one we lease for its owner, one firm would be on both sides, which in New York takes informed consent from you and from the owner. Ask us which floors that covers.

The floors below are our Chelsea listings. Chelsea is the value end of the Midtown South corridor: garment-era loft buildings west of Sixth Avenue, with the 1 train and the A/C/E and F/M lines close by. The Chelsea guide walks the blocks.