Gerrity Launches Commercial Tenant Online Site

Gerrity says he already has closed six deals valued at $1.5 million and has $12 million in pending deals on the books. Three of the six transactions were in Orlando; one in Palm Beach; and two were out of state. He projects his small firm will complete "30 million to $40 million" in tenant representation transactions in 2005.

"We are not out to compete against the Lincolns, the Cushman & Wakefields or the Trammell Crows," says Gerrity, who ran his own successful full-service brokerage, Gerrity Equity advisors, from 1989 to 2003. "Our goal is to fill the specific needs of the user in as quick a time as we can." He says conventional tenant rep deals generally take three to four months to close. "Our deals usually get wrapped up in half that time."

For the Tenant.Com, a fully licensed Florida real estate brokerage, earns only a referral fee from a national network of 45 brokers. The service is free for tenants and property owners.

"What we do is help corporate tenants negotiate for lower overall occupancy costs and more flexible contractual terms by using an auction process with landlords over the web, similar to the Lending Tree [residential mortgage] model, only applied to office space procurement" Gerrity tells GlobeSt.com.

For the Tenant.Com collects a commercial tenant's office lease or purchase requirements, such as square footage needs, occupancy dates, layout, parking, voice data, vendor and customer proximity needs and "creates a bidding environment for those requirements with applicable landlords, sellers and vendors in the appropriate local marketplace," Gerrity says.

The online brokerage "allows a tenant to receive multiple office lease proposals and offers in response to a single tenant request," he says. "This enables the tenant to compare, review, select and proceed to negotiate their transaction through For the Tenant.Com, with the winning bid from a particular landlord offering the best rental rates, terms and conditions for the tenant."

Gerrity is adamant on his firm's objectivity. "Unlike many commercial real estate brokerage firms, For the Tenant.Com does not represent any landlord in any market across the US," he tells GlobeSt.com. "By exclusively representing the tenant's agenda in this process, rather than the landlord's, any possibility for a conflict of interest is prevented."

Gerrity says his partners in For the Tenant.Com are responsible for over $350 million in lease/purchase transactions, from technology startups to law firms to Fortune 500 companies such as GE, Universal Studios, Sverdrup Engineering, Cincinnati Bell, FiServ, Bell Atlantic, National Freight and AMNEX.

For the Tenant.Com is a wholly owned subsidiary of MultiChannel Ventures LLC which owns and operates a broad range of video programming, broadband distribution, interactive services, e-commerce and communications businesses. Gerrity founded MultiChannel Ventures in 1998 as a privately held equity firm headquartered at Universal Studios here.