MIAMI—Eric Groffman knows how to get difficult deals done. He's waded through the office leasing challenges of tenants large and small.
GlobeSt.com caught up with Groffman, a senior vice president at Transwestern, to get his take on the biggest challenges he sees in the market—and how he overcomes them—in part two of this exclusive interview. You can still read part one, Does This Take on Office Market Surprise You?, if you missed it.
GlobeSt.com: What are biggest challenges that you've come across handling office leasing transactions?
Groffman: The biggest challenge—when dealing with large project or large contiguous space—is determining if you continue to wait and target larger users or do you break up space and cater to average demand of 8,000 to 10,000 users. That is always a decision that the real estate advisor and landlord need to make together.
One example is with Total Bank lease at Miami Tower, we had plenty of deals that came across that we could have done that would have broken up our largest contiguous space. Ultimately, we decided to hold off and we successfully secured one the largest, if not the largest new 2013 office deal in the CBD.
GlobeSt.com: How do you overcome the obstacles, generally?
Groffman: Decide on a direction for execution: if you go with smaller users, go with quality tenants and lease up space in a strategic manner that doesn't leave small blocks of space that aren't desirable on their own.
GlobeSt.com: What trends have you noticed in handling office leasing transactions?
Groffman:We have noticed that tenants are less likely in this office environment to drag their feet on consummating a lease. They do a search, focus on a few options, and narrow down to one—from this to lease closing is a shorter timeframe than previous years. Tenants almost have a fear that if tenants don't act—they may lose it—more focused on getting an opportunity and closing a deal, not over-shopping it.
Globest.com: How do you expect the office market to change in 2014 and how will that impact how leasing transactions happen?
Groffman: We are going to continue an upward trend. Demand is going to continue to chip away at existing supply at steady rate.
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