Preparing for Lease Administration

NAI is constantly evaluating tools for providing lease administration services to our clients. However, determining the right solution for the client is not a casual effort. Below are some of the key factors that need to be discussed and understood as you work through the process of setting up a lease administration solution.

• Clearly understand the client needs and how that balances with their requests and perhaps more importantly their expectations.

• It’s important to understand the timing for getting the system populated, tested and running. This is a critical element, as it is a major undertaking to make any system functional with the client information.

• What data is available and in what format it’s stored in is critically important. Before any system can function properly, it must have a core database of information. The effort to gather the data; have it prepared for entry; entered into the system and verified that the data is entered correctly can be time consuming, potentially expensive and is probably the most important work required to make any lease administration solution successful.

• Obtaining key documents pertaining to the lease as the lease documents will need to be abstracted to provide the relevant information required for populating the chosen system solution. Documents used to provide information on leased property should be converted to electronic format and be stored within the lease administration system.

• Determining the reports or output the client is expecting from the system is an excellent tool for defining the necessary fields required in the database structure. Most systems will provide for the “normal” data requirements but your client may have a unique management structure or specific metric it wants included for each lease and these fields or data structures will need to be clearly understood as the system and data is organized in the database.

• Establish a process and responsibility for managing the system updates, imputing new leases, issuing reports and taking action as required. Without this responsibility and process the lease administration system will quickly fail to function.

The above effort (if not already done) can be quite substantial and should be started immediately, even before you select a lease administration system that best fits your client’s needs.

I would suggest that if you collect the data mentioned above and implement a process to manage the lease activity, it will assist the effort in selecting a specific system, as there are quite a few good lease administrations systems available.

by NAI Global

For More Information about Local News, Market Intel, or Commercial Real Estate Opportunities; visit www.Bryan-Cole.com