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Original Post – By: Stephen Searer

Most people that have worked in an office would probably agree with a recent study (pdf) that was undertaken “to examine the relationship between workstation features … and the comfort and performance [of employees]“. They found:

• The greater control employees have over the adjustment of interior workstation features, the lower the stress they experience.

• The more effectively the interior workstation layout supports the work process, the greater the job satisfaction.

Workspace Control

It comes as little surprise that employees would experience less workspace stress when they have more control over their workspace. When thinking through many offices that I’ve seen, employers have often chosen less-expensive models of furniture that often come with less customizability. The study found that “task chair, lighting, display shelves, storage, keyboard and mouse trays, and monitor arms” are all important to employees.

Workspace Effectiveness

While it might seem that all employees need is a desk, a chair, a computer, and access to office supplies to be effective, the study found that a workstation that is tailored to the specific job is the most effective and improves work satisfaction. Workstation variables “such as amount of space, arrangement of furniture/equipment, storage capacity and accessibility to reference materials influence the quality of the work process, which in turn affects job satisfaction”.

Takeaways

• Think through employee needs when designing workstations, but revisit after several months and ask employees if they have any additional needs.
• Don’t forget that all employees are not average human size and might have different needs from one another.
  • If you’re going to spend $300 on each chair, consider offering several options at that price point.
  • Many furniture manufacturers now offer adjustable height desks.
• Employees will most likely have a better impression of their company management if their work needs are considered.
• If possible, produce data regarding the changes made to workstations to prove effectiveness. But, don’t forget that some things may simply have perceived value and add to employee satisfaction.

Readers: What adjustable workstation features have you found to make you more effective and your job more satisfying?

Original Article – Hans Steege

We thought we’d save money by acting as our own leasing agent. That’s how we learned–the hard way–what realtors really do.

A good commercial realtor is worth his or her weight in gold.

To many of you, I may just be stating the obvious. But we learned this the hard way.

Last year my small company needed to relocate to a bigger, better space.  We knew that we would continue to lease, where we needed to be located (generally), how much space we needed, and roughly how much we could spend.

Armed with that information, we figured it would be in our interest, and in the interest of our future landlord, if we acted as our own leasing agent. We could then take the money we saved by not having a realtor and split it with our landlord. That would make us a more attractive tenant, right?

Wrong.

I guess, in a sense, forgoing a realtor did make us a more attractive tenant. When building owners realized we did not have representation, they thought they could take advantage of us. And without a realtor acting on our behalf, we were also often seen as a company that didn’t need to be taken seriously.

We didn’t know any of this in January 2010, when our quest for a new location began. We scoured online listings and drove around acceptable neighborhoods. We even called listing agents directly to see spaces, even though it’s Real Estate 101 that you should never do this. That’s how sold we were on our belief that landlords would share our enthusiasm for saving money.

We looked at many buildings. Some were good, some were bad. We did our own CAD work to figure out if a space would work. (That part of going it alone worked.) The building owners were generally happy to give us CAD data for us to work with, so there was no need for us to work with an outside architect to figure out how we could actually use the space in a prospective building.

By summer, we felt ready to offer our proposals to the finalists. We figured that any of the options would be acceptable, and that we could use each as leverage against the other.

At least, that was our plan until the first proposal was ignored. The other proposals were all replaced by the building owners’ own proposals, which bore no resemblance to what we had drawn up. We started to negotiate a lease for the space that we liked best, but after weeks of going around in circles it was clear that we weren’t getting anywhere.

So we bit the bullet and hired a commercial realtor. Thank goodness. We had done a great job of figuring out which space and location would work best for us, but the real value the realtor provided was negotiating the terms of the lease and the build-out provisions.  We didn’t get everything we wanted, but we got a lot more than we would have otherwise. We got a significant rebate to cover build-out costs, reasonable repair terms, and the ability to have dogs in the office. And, of course, the wisdom not to try this on our own next time.

In reality, the opportunity to buy a AAA asset in Toronto can come up only once a decade and there are REITS out that will stretch for the deal.

Article – Scotia Plaza is up for sale.  They are hoping to achieve $1 billion and now that the teachers have the cash to spend after selling the Leafs it may happen?
Article – Dundee REIT just closed on Whiterock for $580 million
Article – This was right on the heals of their purchase for Slate Properties at $832 million

Landmark Office Building purchase:
1) Commerce Court, Toronto (2000), $618-million
Sold by CIBC to British Columbia Investment Management Corp.

2) Royal Bank Plaza, Toronto (1999), $485-million
Sold by Royal Bank to Oxford Properties and OMERS Realty Corp.

3) Bankers Hall Complex, Calgary (2000), $437-million
Sold by TrizecHahn Corporation and Calgary Financial Tower Ltd. to Gentra Canada Investments

4) Brookfield Place – TD Canada Trust Tower, Toronto (2008), $429-million (half-stake)
Sold by Brookfield Properties to OMERS Realty

5) Gulf Canada Square, Calgary (2007), $382-million
Sold by O&Y, Brookfield, CGS to Great West Life and London Life

By the numbers:
Downtown – 4.6% vacancy rate (overall) – but most tenant’s are looking for B class space in the Financial Core which sits at 3.3%

Our numbers show the opportunities for “deals” in B class office buildings are in the Yonge and Eglinton (6% vacancy) and Yonge and St. Clair markets (7.4%).  Contrary to expectations, Yonge and Sheppard is actually one of the strongest performing markets at a vacancy rate of 1.3%!

Other thoughts:
·         Since 2000, the GTA office market has averaged 2.3 million square feet of absorption annually.  This year’s absorption hit over 4.1 million square feet, higher than the 2010 annual absorption of nearly 3.4 million square feet.

·         The Downtown office market hit a 10-year high showing positive absorption of 2.1 million square feet.  In the last 10 years, absorption has repeatedly been under 2 million square feet, with the last high being in 2000, when over 3.2 million square feet was absorbed throughout the year.

·         Availability rates in the Downtown office market have continued to decline, reaching 8.0 percent at the end of the quarter. The last time the availability rate was this low was in the fourth quarter of 2008, when it was 7.5 percent.

Original Post – By: Stephen Searer

Open office layouts have been the dominant style for office designers for several years. While the debate continues to rage on about whether they are superior to closed offices (most likely not cease any time soon), a 2005 study examining the effects of office design on workplace distraction caught my eye.

What I appreciate most about this particular study is that it did not take any particular side, but instead identified common sources of distraction in open plan offices and possible solutions through better design.

Distraction Findings

One statistic found that for “57% of the subjects, combined background noise caused “major deterioration” in their ability to concentrate.” The major sources of distraction were:

1. continuously ringing telephones
2. people’s conversations (both face-to-face and telephone)
3. printers/computer/keyboard noise
4. outside noise

A second concept identified that employees did not grow accustomed to office noise, but rather reported more disruption the longer they were exposed to it.

Distraction Solutions

If you do find yourself or your employees becoming distracted at work (and it isn’t from reading Office Snapshots), perhaps one of the following solutions from the study will help:

• Provide quiet areas away from noisy equipment and other people for workers who need to concentrate on tasks that require undisrupted attention (e.g., writing, mathematical tasks).
• Incorporate absorption materials and partitioning to make background noises such as voices less distinguishable from one another.
• Choose phones that have adjustable ringtones or that can easily be silenced when unanswered.

Other distraction reducers:

• Don’t put a loud department that is on the phone all day next to developers that are concentrating.
• Encourage communication that will not be a source of distraction for other employees.
• Allow employees to listen to music with headphones.
• Stop watching cat videos.

What have you found to help minimize distraction in an Open Plan office?

First, my thoughts:
Until we have a more distinct line between what is public and private data, the debate and heated exchanges will continue. Example, I see no reason why I can’t post pictures of office space and buildings on my website with the brokers / listing agents name prominently displayed as the person to call for additional info. The brokerages and agents however, for some reason, don’t want this information “out there on the net” and threaten to call TREB / RECO to file complaints. My rebuttal to this is, maybe I should call your Landlord and let them know you are not doing your best / fiduciary duty to get the listing information out to as many people as possible. Usually that’s not taken very well but I don’t get it?!

Where’s your line as it relates public or private information / transaction data / marketing material? Can I post pictures of a building I have taken or the vacant space I have toured to save my clients time or is this private? I believe transaction data to be private but pictures of lobby’s, individual spaces and what is sent out publicly via brokers and tenant’s flyers to be public.

The original article that got it all stirred up:
CoStar CEO Andrew Florance is peeved. He heard that a CBRE executive sent a memo to agents asking them not to provide lease data to CoStar. In a Washington Post story, Florance said that CBRE should be examined “…by the federal government for anti-competitive practices…” Just like the CoStar/LoopNet merger is being “examined” for possible anti-trust violations.

I suppose some smaller brokers might cheer Florance on for taking CRE behemoth CBRE to task. After all, big national brokerages and industry consolidation puts the smaller ones at a distinct disadvantage.

This concerns CoStar, too. Florance claims CRE “…is the most concentrated industry that exists”. And that the “concentration” of brokerages leads to hoarding data that keeps owners and tenants from using “alternative” brokers.

But Florance isn’t championing the smaller broker at all: “One thing that could happen is that owners lose the ability to represent themselves because they lack the necessary information.” Where would owners get the information to represent themselves? From CoStar, of course.

Let’s get one thing straight before we continue. The data in question is lease data. Publicly traded companies have to provide some lease transaction details in financial reports but private companies do not. CoStar is whining about uncooperative brokers interfering with CoStar’s “right” to get this data.

This has nothing to do with what is right. It’s about competition for data and clients – those owners and tenants CoStar would have bypass the agent. If CoStar can’t get this data, they have less to offer. And without comprehensive data, their reporting will always be suspect. Poor CoStar…

The problem for CoStar is that is that there is no reason for agents to give CoStar lease data of private companies especially when the agent has confidentiality agreements. Even without a written agreement, the permission for transmission and publication of that data is rightly at the discretion of the tenant or owner – not the agent.

I don’t want to hear how agents should provide this information for the good of the industry. How is it good for the industry to pass along private client information? Is the handful of lease comps you might get worth betraying a confidence?

And don’t get me started about the value of someone else’s lease information. Reliance on lease comps is over-hyped in most markets. Even if you could standardize the transaction details, all a comp represents is a unique set of conditions in a single moment of time that cannot easily be generalized to any other deal. You get all you need to know about where prices are going by looking at asking lease rate trends.

Regardless, CoStar wants the data. And it takes a lot of gall to complain when your competition won’t give it up. That’s right. Any brokerage that collects its own data is CoStar’s competition. History shows what CoStar likes to do with it’s competition.

If CoStar really wants to be the premier provider of CRE data, their researchers should get off their lazy butts and call the people who really own the data – the owners and tenants – instead of harassing agents. What? Too difficult? Can’t get anyone to return your call? Welcome to the world of commercial real estate… Maybe handing out a “Power Owner” award will help.

Hey you!  Agent?!  What are your thoughts?

By: Stephen Searer
Origional Post

A recent study set out to see how generational differences affected preferences for workspace features and capabilities. I found it to be fairly enlightening.

Definitions:

+ Silent Generation: born between 1929 and 1945
+ Baby Boomers: born between 1946 and 1964
+ Generation X: born between 1965 and 1978
+ Generation Y: born between 1979 and 1997

Findings

The study found that all generations found workplaces to be important, but the workplace features each generation deemed important differ greatly.

Now What?

The study also identified some common themes that were apparent through the study with regard to future workplace design and the generational differences therein. Below are the cliff notes, and if you want to read them in their entirety, don’t forget to check out the research here.

Choice – “The office will serve as the setting for an array of social activities and collaborative work experiences, providing spaces that employees can choose from based on their immediate needs.”

Experience – “Baby Boomers value function, Gen-Y values connection. The workspace will evolve from its strictly functional role (providing support for individual and group work processes), to being part of a holistic system that creates a work experience—embracing the social and emotional components of work.”

Integrated Work – “The most effective spaces will support the seamless transition of people moving between individual and group work modes, both between locations and within their primary workspaces.”

Distributed Interaction – The plan of office facilities will be “landscaped”—still quite open but interspersed with some enclosed offices, lots of formal and informal meeting spaces, huddle rooms of varying sizes and formats, and small amenity spaces (pantries, coffee nooks, etc.) (Wymer, 2009; 2010). Any of these spaces can be used to support the short, informal meeting style of the typical employee of 2020.”

Avison Young – full report

CANADA
Office

Leasing activity was strong across Canada’s office markets in 2011, with vacancy rates decreasing and rental rates trending upward in most markets nationwide. Canada’s overall office vacancy rate has declined steadily from 9.2% at the depths of the recession in 2009, to 8.3% in 2010, to 7.6% in the closing months of 2011 – solidifying the recovery.

Six of the 12 Canadian markets surveyed experienced a decrease in vacancy rates of varying degrees in 2011. Surprising many market observers, Calgary posted the most impressive improvement over 2010 with vacancy plummeting 340 bps to 7.2% as 2011 drew to a close. From West to East, vacancy rates also fell in Vancouver (-80 bps to 7.6%), Lethbridge (-50 bps to 9.4%), Mississauga/GTA West (-40 bps to 11.6%), Toronto (-70 bps to 7.9%) and Montreal (-60 bps to 8.6%). From West to East, those markets that witnessed a rise in office vacancy included Edmonton (+90 bps to 10%), Winnipeg (+40 bps to 6.9%), Ottawa (+40 bps to 5.6%) and Quebec City (+20 bps to 4.7%). Regina remained unchanged at 1% – the tightest office market in the country once again.

Looking ahead, the national office vacancy rate is forecast to decline an additional 60 bps to end 2012 in the 7% range. While vacancy rates are expected to hold steady in Montreal (8.6%) and Ottawa (5.6%), rates are expected to trend lower in Vancouver (-120 bps to 6.4%), Calgary (-200 bps to 5.2%), Edmonton (-140 bps to 8.6%), Lethbridge (-20 bps to 9.2%), Mississauga/GTA West (-100 bps to 10.6%) and Toronto (-70 bps to 7.2%). Conversely, due to some much needed supply, Regina will see its vacancy rate climb 320 bps to 4.1% by the end of 2012. Other markets that are expected to see an uptick in vacancy include: Winnipeg (+10 bps to 7%), Quebec City (+60 bps to 5.3%) and Halifax (+130 to 10.3%).

Please note the attached office space is not listed with OfficeSearchToronto.com but call us first at 416-643-3713 or email us here!

Interesting survey – check it out!

What are the three most important features that make an office a better place to work?

• Individual Workstation Comfort (68%, 94 Votes)
• Proper Lighting/Temperature (57%, 79 Votes)
• Proximity to Home (53%, 73 Votes)
• Useful Meeting Spaces (28%, 39 Votes)
• Nice/Clean Restrooms (15%, 21 Votes)
• Well-stocked Kitchen (14%, 20 Votes)
• Recreational Activities (12%, 16 Votes)
• Ability to Workout/Shower (11%, 15 Votes)
• ‘Green’ Design (9%, 13 Votes)
• Other/Added in the Comments (4%, 6 Votes)