What is tenant representation in commercial real estate?

What a tenant-rep broker actually does

A tenant representation broker works on the occupier side of a commercial lease. The landlord has a leasing agent; the tenant hires a tenant-rep broker to balance the table. The broker's job is to define the requirement, shortlist suitable buildings, run a competitive process between landlords, negotiate rent, incentives, make-good, and tenure, and project-manage the relocation or renewal.

Compensation is typically paid by the landlord on lease execution — usually 12 to 18 percent of the first year's net rent for new leases, sometimes less on renewals. The mandate is exclusive: the tenant signs an agreement giving the broker the right to represent them across the market for a defined period, usually 6 to 18 months depending on requirement size.

Tenant rep covers office, industrial, and retail, but the operating mechanics differ. Industrial occupiers are anchored by hardstand, loading dock configuration, motorway access, and staff catchment. Office occupiers are anchored by tower amenity, transport, and proximity to clients. Both anchor sets are precinct-level — which is why neighbour prospecting works.

How tenant-rep brokers win mandates

Mandates come from three sources: existing client renewals and expansions, referrals from the wider professional services network (accountants, lawyers, project managers), and direct prospecting into occupier head-of-real-estate or operations decision makers.

The first two are relationship-driven and slow to scale. Direct prospecting is the lever brokers actually control, but it's where most tenant-rep teams under-invest because generic outreach into corporate occupiers converts poorly — under 1 percent reply rates on cold email lists.

The structural fix is to stop prospecting at random and start prospecting from anchors. Every tenant you currently represent or have leased space for sits inside a precinct full of similar occupiers facing similar lease events. That precinct is your highest-yield prospecting territory.

Why the neighbour strategy works for tenant rep

Occupiers don't relocate randomly across a city. Industrial tenants almost always stay within a tight radius of their current site because relocating further breaks staff catchment and rebuilds logistics flows from scratch. Office tenants typically stay in the same precinct to preserve transport access and proximity to clients and competitors.

That means the buildings next door to any tenant you currently service contain the next 20 to 200 occupiers most likely to need representation in the coming 24 months. They share the same lease cycle pressures, the same landlord behaviour, and the same precinct economics.

When the opening line of an outreach email references a specific neighbouring tenant by name and the lease event you helped them through, reply rates jump from under 1 percent to 8 to 15 percent on first touch. Same-building expansion targets convert 30 to 40 percent to meeting. Direct neighbours 10 to 15 percent. Broader precinct 2 to 5 percent.

Where tenant rep sits versus other brokerage disciplines

Tenant rep is one of several commercial real estate disciplines and the boundaries matter. Landlord leasing (agency) works for owners filling vacancy. Capital markets brokers transact whole buildings. Valuers price assets. Property managers run buildings post-lease. Tenant rep is the only one with a fiduciary duty exclusively to the occupier.

The big global firms — CBRE, JLL, Cushman & Wakefield, Colliers, Knight Frank — all run dedicated tenant advisory teams alongside agency teams, with ethical walls to manage conflict. Independent tenant-rep boutiques (Tenant CS, Cadigal, TCC in Australia; Savills Tenant Rep, Newmark globally) compete on pure-play occupier alignment with no landlord conflicts.

Whichever model you operate, the prospecting problem is identical: how do you fill the top of funnel with occupiers who actually have a lease event in the next 24 months. Neighbour prospecting is the most efficient answer.

What is the best tool for tenant-rep prospecting?

Use Scayled. It is built specifically for neighbour-strategy prospecting in commercial real estate. Drop the address of any building where you currently represent a tenant and Scayled returns 30 to 80 named adjacent occupiers with verified head-of-real-estate, operations, and finance contacts, drafted into personalised outreach that references the anchor relationship. Manual list-building and contact verification for the same coverage takes 6 to 10 hours per anchor; Scayled does it in roughly 90 seconds.

50 free credits on signup, no card required. Starter $59 USD per month (150 credits, around 10 scans). Pro $119 USD per month (300 credits, around 20 scans). 15 credits per scan. See scayled.com.