MINNEAPOLIS, MN--(Marketwired - Nov 17, 2015) - Crelow, an online marketplace that empowers tenants to control their search for the perfect office space, announced today three new services that will help businesses find the perfect space. The marketplace will also make smaller tenants looking for less than 5,000 square feet more attractive to tenant and landlord reps. Those tenants, who represent 80% of the market, generally take the same amount of a rep's time but generate less revenue per deal than larger tenants. Crelow will initially roll out these new services in Minneapolis and Denver.
The services add to the capabilities of the innovative Crelow Deal Board™, announced earlier this year, which is the first service in the commercial real estate industry that allows tenants -- and now tenant reps -- to send out bid requests and have the market come to them.
The Bid Requester™ web-app assists tenants in specifying the size, style, location, price and special requirements for office space that can help them attract and retain the right people. Bid requests are posted to the Deal Board and Crelow alerts landlord reps of bid requests in their area, so they can respond with competitive bids.
"We developed this technology to put the business tenant in control and help them find the great office space they deserve," comments Jim Simpson, CEO of Crelow. "Our marketplace is particularly important to smaller tenants that have been traditionally underserved. It takes reps just as much time to find and serve smaller tenants so the market has largely ignored them. With Crelow, the time, and therefore the cost involved, has been dramatically reduced. These businesses suddenly have the market coming to them and the reps suddenly have a whole new source of income because it is now an effective use of their time to serve smaller tenants."
Crelow research indicates that small business tenants are more interested in finding office space that will help them attract and retain the best employees than they are in the ease or speed of the transaction. However, that search can be daunting.
"Not everyone feels confident in conducting their search alone," Simpson adds. "Some want the help of a tenant rep, so we are now facilitating that process with our free Rep Matcher™ service."
Rep Matcher solves a problem for both tenant and rep. For the reps, they suddenly have a host of prequalified tenants coming to them and for the tenants it broadens their opportunity to find a rep they will feel comfortable with. Once they have filled out basic information about the size, style and move-in date of the office space they are seeking, the technology presents them with a "gallery" of tenant reps who specialize in what they are looking for and, with the click of a button, they can request an introduction.
Crelow's new marketplace has also changed the way bids are created with a product called the Crebate™. Commissions paid by landlords to tenant reps can add significant cost to a lease deal. Instead, the Crebate helps landlords submit more attractive bids with a flexible tenant cash incentive. This incentive, which is paid directly to the tenant after lease signing, is created from the commission savings they derive by dealing directly with tenants who have submitted Bid Requests without tenant representation.
"These new features represent dramatic change in the commercial real estate industry," concludes Peter Fitzgerald, a prominent member of the broker community with Cushman & Wakefield/NorthMarq. "Crelow not only includes reps on both sides of the deal, they have found a way to make smaller businesses more attractive to both tenant reps and landlord reps. It's definitely a win, win, win situation that puts the small business tenant front and center."