They’re super secret.
Micro real estate is an up and coming form of real estate that relies on the ability of property owners to lease small portions of their real estate to be used by a machine or piece of hardware. Alternatively, micro real estate also includes small spaces to store vehicles, like parking spots or boating slips. Essentially, there are small pieces of real estate that are highly prized for their proximity to a desired location and, in the case of vending machines or helium hotspots, the amount of foot traffic that passes by.
In more rural areas, electric vehicle chargers could turn a small property into a highly prized location if there are not many other EV chargers around. Clearly, EV chargers are a significant opportunity for micro real estate agents.
Drawing Parallels Between CRE and Micro CRE
So, as a parallel to typical commercial property agents, there are also micro real estate agents that can help facilitate the transactions between the micro property owners and the micro-property renters (a.k.a. the owners/operators of the hardware or machine). There is no reason why a typically real estate agent could not act as a micro-property real estate agent, however, there are some nuanced differences between a full size property that is for commercial or residential use, and small micro-properties that are for the use of hardware and machines.
For this reason, Leptonic, Inc. is dedicated to providing information to existing real estate agents that want to get into the micro real estate business, and also to help non-real estate agents understand what the pros and cons of micro-properties are.
Can there be too many vending machines?
You may be wondering, “If a commercial property owner wants to maximize their profits, shouldn’t they just rent out every square inch of their property to vending machine owners/operators?”. If there were no other constraints, yes that would be optimal. However, the real world has significant real and natural constraints that would prevent a vending machine city on a commercial property.
Presumably, one vending machine owner/operator wouldn’t want to cover the area with vending machines, because it would be extremely expensive to buy and operate all of those vending machines. Depending upon how different each vending machine’s product offerings are, there could be some internal competition that would cannibalize profits for the vending machine owner/operator.
Let’s Get Wild
So, there would need to be multiple vending machine owners/operators, which leads to a lot of external competition. The with so many vending machines on the property, would people really want to still visit this property? I could see a theme park like the Hershey’s Theme Park in Pennsylvania having a row of candy and merchandise vending machines as you enter and exit the park, but still, there needs to be other things at the park (I love roller coasters) to draw people there in the first place.
Maybe a vending machine themed park could be an attraction in it of itself, but I think there would be very few people who would just want to walk around and look at vending machines all day, but I could be wrong. I think a choose-your-own-adventure vending machine roller coaster could be cool though, like you select which route you want the roller coaster to “vend” from and there could be different drops or loops coming from each vending spot – A2 please!
