Space is Money
In essence, the only way (without raising rental rates) to extract more value from commercial real estate is to have more rentable space on a commercial property. So, if you’re managing an office building, you’d want to figure out if there was a way to add more square footage to your building by using land that is adjacent to the building, or determine if it is possible to add another story to the building.
While that’s all well and good, it can be expensive and it doesn’t necessarily increase the income from the property until all of that construction is complete.
Using the concept of a micro-property you can make a commercial property a more efficient income generating business. Instead of adding more space, the idea is to take the space that you already have and use it more efficiently. For instance, if a parking lot is part of the commercial property, then electric vehicle chargers could be added to the parking lot to increase income.
Multiple Revenue Streams from One Commercial Property
This is not just a way to increase ancillary income for commercial properties, but also an amenity as tenants may already own electric cars, and in the future, it may even become a necessity to have several electric car chargers at an office building.
Alternatively, a parking spot or two could be leased to industrious urban/vertical farmers who want to grow fresh salad greens and other produce on site. This could certainly also be viewed as an amenity for tenants as having easy access to farm fresh food right outside their door can make healthy eating easier. The vertical farmers have the benefit of the foot traffic of the office building, so they can have a ready consumer base, and the owner of the commercial property will receive rent from the farmers. It’s a win-win-win situation.
In may people’s minds, vending machines are a mysterious contraption that may or may not be stocked regularly, but they are a great way to extract more value from commercial real estate. Thanks to the advancement of the internet, vending machines can now have their own inventory tracking systems to let the owner/operator know when stock is running low, or if products have expired.
Also, there is a vending machine for just about anything you can think of. This situation can also be a win-win-win for commercial property owners, vending machine owners/operators, and consumers.
These are but a few scenarios that are enabled by micro-properties, and Leptonic, Inc. is focused on enabling the micro-property market through our micro real estate marketplace, so that these transactions are easier to initiate and complete.
Proptech Companies are Leading the Charge in Commercial Real Estate
In a figurative sense, proptech companies are trying to build an efficient future in commercial real estate, but they are also literally adding EV charging stations to commercial properties. There are several companies vying for all of the EV charging locations that they can get there hands on to “land and expand”, and I think there will be similar strategies in other micro real estate sectors in the next few years. This means ample opportunity for up and coming commercial property estate agents that want to get into micro real estate and the formalization of micro real estate language vs. other terms like micro flipping.
