“...it's using Placer in its most simple form. If I can use Placer in its most simple form and sign leases with it, then that says a lot for the rest of the product, where I can utilize void analysis and more. But at its most simple form, if I can convince one little tenant to lease 1,500 feet, that’s a great thing.”

~ Darren Bovard, VP of Leasing

The Challenge

Managing high leasing volume in distributed markets while growing

For Darren Bovard, VP of leasing at NewMark Merrill Companies (NMC), the challenge is having efficiency and data-driven insights from a remote location. Managing close to 100 lease renewals and 50 new leases each year across 3 states, Darren does everything he can to work with the local teams while having the data he needs to negotiate leases and keep his centers occupied.

Placer.ai is a key piece of Darren’s puzzle, giving him insights into foot traffic (and how those rank relative to comparables), demographics, crime, vehicle traffic, and construction data for each of the markets NewMark operates in. It was Placer data that helped Darren sign a lease with a tenant to a difficult space.

Filling a small, inline space with tenant restrictions at a center in Sacramento

Darren had a space that was vacant for years. He gave us the details: "It's a good shopping center anchored by quality national tenants, with freeway visibility. We had an in-line space of approximately 1,500 feet that had sat vacant for years. There were restrictions with the anchors which meant we couldn't lease to restaurants, and that’s challenging when more than a third of our leases every year are restaurant tenants."

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Darren knew he had to get creative, so he turned to other tenants in his broader portfolio and in the surrounding market.

‍The Solution‍

How can I prove our center’s better and sign this deal when I’ve already matched all the terms?

One potential tenant Darren identified was a 100-store cell phone repair chain with a franchisee Darren liked who had 3 locations in the region. Darren talked with his broker and learned that the owner was already considering opening at a nearby center, and felt that center would be a greater fit.

Darren went through multiple LOIs with the franchisee, ultimately matching the other center on every term.
But the deal dragged on.

The lack of differentiation in either offer, and the fact that the tenant already had leaned toward another center, left him feeling that it would be nothing more than a “50/50, [where] the tenant’s going to wake up one morning and  just make a decision.” That’s not a good position to be in. “I matched the rent. I matched the term, the TI dollars, the delivery condition, the location in the center. Everything. Those are all things that I tweaked to try to get the deal.”

The Placer reports were the differentiator that put the deal over the edge

One day, while discussing the deal internally, Darren had the idea to run a Placer report, and see if Placer could give any insights that could put the deal in his favor.

The results changed the deal in less than a week.

“It popped into my head, you know what…what if I just run a Placer report to show him? I didn't know at the time if our center was going to be bigger, better, or stronger… but it turns out that our center over-performed the competing center on traffic consistently and over-performed on unique visits.” In fact, Placer showed 2.5x more traffic to Darren’s center than the other.

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Luckily, the tenant was very analytical, and this Placer information was the thing that tipped the scale in NMC’s favor. Darren had a signed LOI within one week of sending the Placer report, and a signed lease shortly after.

“Sometimes that's all it takes… just one extra thing. What’s nice is that the Placer reports on foot traffic are a fact. It’s a fact that we can compare one center to another. For many tenants customers traffic is at the top of the list when making a leasing decision."

‍The Outcome

SUCCESS: A property worth $550k more upon disposition, done using out-of-the-box Placer reports

Asked about how Placer’s data impacted the overall performance of his Sacramento property, Darren spelled it out for us: “Look, 1,500 feet…it's not gonna make or break the shopping center. But I knew it was very important to fill, and Placer helped us do it. With a $36k yearly rent at a 6.5% cap rate, the cash flow from that little space we filled adds over $550k to the property value overall, and that’s meaningful to us.”

Perhaps most exciting for Darren, as he considers how Placer helps his team at NewMark Merrill Companies, is how much value they received ($550k on a single deal) from the most basic feature within Placer, and how much may be in store with all the other features we offer and across all their other properties:

“...it's using Placer in its most simple form. If I can use Placer in its most simple form and sign leases with it, then that says a lot for the rest of the product, where I can utilize void analysis and more. But at its most simple form, if I can convince one little tenant to lease 1,500 feet, that’s a great thing.”

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