Using the company’s free online platform, tenants pick their location, budget and product type, as well as the submarkets, square footage, lease length and start date they are seeking.
Once those parameters are set, one of TenantBase’s team of 130 local brokers gets in touch and, if a lease is ultimately signed, collects a commission. (TenantBase also partners with local firms that use the platform; in those situations, the company receives a transaction fee.)
“As a broker, what I saw was the process of helping companies find spaces was incredibly manual and time intensive,” said founder Bennett Washabaugh, a commercial real estate broker. “We thought there was a better way to help companies connect with more landlords quickly.”
TenantBase launched six years ago and is now operating in 12 markets — including Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Francisco — with plans to expand to 50 markets in the next year. Washabaugh said tens of thousands of companies are signing up monthly for the platform.
TenantBase, which still exists as its own offering, announced a partnership with CommercialEdge, a listing platform owned by Santa Barbara-based property management company Yardi Systems Inc., Nov. 18.
TenantBase is focused on tenants that need to lease space while CommercialEdge is geared toward property owners and their leasing agents. The partnership will allow CommercialEdge to have more tenant demand data and better understand what tenants are in the market and what they are looking for.
“This is a great opportunity to help our customers lease their vacant space faster,” Arjun Rao, director of global solutions at Yardi, said in a statement.
With the Covid-19 pandemic changing the way people work, the software also makes it easy to look at new deal options, Washabaugh said.
One way the company is doing that is by understanding space needs and even carving out smaller spaces within a larger one. For example, if a 50,000-square-foot lease were available but a tenant only needed a fraction of that, TenantBase agents would work to get the tenant and others into the space.
Rao said that understanding a tenant’s space requirements can help landlords too.
“Leasing agents understand all the ways they can configure space and they don’t want to list every possible option on a website. Understanding the aggregated demand provides powerful insight that can result in significant financial gains,” Rao said in a statement.
Washabaugh added that TenantBase software can provide insight into active demand for space, which has been “a big pain point for landlords.” Understanding tenant demand will better help landlords market their space, he said.
One other advantage is that signing a lease using the software can be completed in less than 60 days, whereas traditional lease transactions can take up to a year, according to TenantBase.
“We’ve been trying to get the industry to adopt technology,” Washabaugh said.
“Everything has really accelerated. We have all of these active businesses, especially in the warehouse sector where demand for space is increasing significantly,” he added. “They need space and need a better way to find it.”
