Search results

Corporate occupiers require offices and services which meet their business needs, while landlords must attract and retain occupiers to maximise occupancy and rental income. The purpose of this paper is to help landlords and property managers understand what aspects of property management matter most to corporate occupiers, so that they can achieve a mutually beneficial relationship.

This paper analyses interviews with 1,334 office tenants in the UK, conducted over an 11-year period, to investigate determinants of occupier satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy. Structural equation modelling and regressions are performed using respondents’ ratings of satisfaction with many aspects of occupancy as explanatory variables. The dependent variables include satisfaction with property management, value for money, overall occupier satisfaction, lease renewal intentions and occupiers’ willingness to recommend their landlord.

The aspects with most impact on occupiers’ satisfaction are the office building itself, its location and amenities, and also communication with their property manager, a belief that their business needs are understood and the property manager’s responsiveness to occupiers’ requests. Occupiers’ loyalty depends mainly upon feeling that their rent and service charges provide value for money, an amicable leasing process, the professionalism of their property manager and the corporate social responsibility of the landlord. “Empathy” is crucial to occupiers’ willingness to recommend their landlord, and clear documentation and efficient legal process improve occupiers’ perception of receiving “Value for Money”.

The sample is skewed towards occupiers of prime office buildings in the UK, owned by landlords who care sufficiently about their tenants to commission studies into occupier satisfaction.

This research should help to improve the landlord – tenant relationship, benefitting the businesses that rent property and helping building managers understand where to focus their efforts to achieve maximum effect on occupier satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.

There has been little academic research into the determinants of satisfaction of occupiers of UK commercial property. This large-scale study enables the most influential factors to be identified and prioritised.

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. Primarily, it examines the relationship between sustainable buildings and occupiers, by summarising the key extant literature. Secondarily, the paper proposes avenues for future research relating to the impact of sustainability on corporate real estate strategy.

The paper reviews over 90 relevant publications related to sustainability, real estate market responses and corporate real estate, focussing on the role and response of occupiers. The approach concentrates on occupier strategies, specifically considering influences such as corporate social responsibility (CSR), landlord–tenant relationships, the changing occupier role and the “circle of blame”.

In recent years, literature has increasingly begun to reflect nuances in occupier responses to sustainable, prime, office real estate, with some conflicting findings as to the importance of sustainability. Location remains the dominant consideration in decision-making for occupiers, but sustainability is key to CSR and “value-add” in certain sectors. More effective use of sustainable buildings requires improved communication between landlord and tenant. The authors’ review demonstrates that challenges still remain in relation to the “circle of blame”. More research needs to be done in relation to the emergence of sustainability in the non-prime and retail sectors.

Through collating key literature in this topical research area, the paper provides a critical review of occupier responses to sustainable real estate, and, therefore, a fuller understanding of emerging market practices. Additionally, it suggests future research directions.

Publishes some of the findings of a research project that examined whether valuers and valuations have a role in the provision of more strategic property advice to business occupiers. The research consisted of a postal questionnaire survey of over 250 businesses that examined the role of property and the use of valuations in strategic business decisions. The survey was supported by the findings from 18 structured interviews and an analysis of over 70 sets of company accounts. The results revealed that, despite valuers becoming increasingly involved in measuring corporate efficiency and valuations being used for this purpose, business occupiers do not recognise valuers in a strategic role. Instead, many firms see valuers as providing a single valuation service, the estimation of market value for purchase/sale decisions and corporate disclosure. The research suggests that valuations do have a role to play in the provision of more strategic business advice but the valuer will need to understand the client’s wider business needs and how property plays a part in the client’s business. Valuers need to convince clients that they are not overly technical in their outlook, have broad business skills that include strategic thinking and an awareness of business issues.

Corporate occupiers are among the important interest groups in the real estate business. The whole value network in the real estate sector, consisting of, e.g. developers, investors, and service providers depend on the occupier organizations and meeting their needs and preferences. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the methods applied by the parties in the real estate sector in identifying and evaluating office occupiers' needs and preferences regarding the physical, virtual, social as well as financial elements of the workplace.

Based on theme interviews with selected Finnish organizations, the applied methods for evaluating office occupiers' needs and preferences are analyzed and presented. The applicability of the methods is evaluated by a set of criteria based on a literature review and the interviewees' responses.

The paper presents an efficient and relevant evaluation of the applied methods in matrix form. Additionally, recommendations for the development of the methods are suggested.

Analyzing the occupiers' needs and preferences related to physical, virtual, social, and financial elements of offices requires applicable methods. The methods should enable the parties in the real estate sector to analyze the direction of the real estate markets as regards the different elements.

The paper provides a classification and analysis of the methods applied to identify office occupier organizations' needs and preferences. Suggestions for further development of the methods are presented enabling a comprehensive analysis of needs and preferences.

This paper investigates how large UK corporate occupiers perceive the potential role of flexible office space in their office portfolios in a post-pandemic context.

The research methodology is qualitative and applied. For a longitudinal survey, convenience sampling was used to obtain co-operation from 11 corporate real estate managers with responsibility for managing large corporate real estate portfolios spread across a range of business sectors and countries. Semi-structured interviews were selected as the core research method to seek and to optimise the balance between discovery and generalisability.

Although the pandemic has led corporate occupiers to fundamentally re-appraise where and when different work tasks are performed, it is not yet clear whether this has major implications for the flex space sector. The flex space model, with its blending of various occupiers and activities, is perceived to be poorly aligned with an increasing emphasis on the office as a core corporate hub facilitating connection, collaboration, enculturation, learning and creativity. Since most flex space is concentrated in central locations, it is also not well positioned to benefit from any decentralisation of office functions. However, as the flex space sector evolves in response to structural shifts in employment and working practices and business change, its various products are likely to be a continuing requirement from corporate occupiers for short-term solutions to demand shocks, the need for rapid market entry, accommodation for short-term projects and access to desk space in multiple locations.

Understanding occupiers' drivers in their decision-making on selecting the method of occupation will assist investors in how they might adjust what they offer in the marketplace.

Whilst there has been a substantive number of surveys of corporate occupiers' perceptions and intentions regarding their office portfolio, this paper focusses on a specifically on the flex space sector. Whilst previous research has mainly been extensive, this research study is intensive.

Occupier satisfaction has received noticeable attention in recent years due to the perceived relationship between satisfaction and investment performance which has led to property investors giving an increased priority to creating good landlord-tenant relationship. The purpose of this paper is to assess the occupier satisfaction on management of commercial properties in Nigeria using Akure as the research site.

Based on a total population of 160 and employing random sampling technique, 142 questionnaires were administered on the occupiers of shopping complexes along the major routes of the city namely Oba-Adesida and Oyemekun, out of which 98 were returned and found adequate for analysis. Data analysis were done using weighted mean score and paired t-test.

The result revealed that there is significant difference between occupiers’ expected and actual satisfaction. The paper recommends a tenant-oriented management style for better performance.

The most important contribution of the paper is to underline the need for pragmatic and tenant-oriented management as a means to achieving increased occupier satisfaction in commercial properties.

The purpose of this research was twofold. First, to investigate the views of occupiers in a typical UK city on the importance of various sustainability issues, their perceived impact of different sustainability drivers and willingness to pay. Second, the environmental and social performance of existing buildings in that city was examined.

The research focuses on buildings of 10,000 feet² or more that have been constructed in the Bristol city‐region in the UK over the past 50 years. The buildings in the sample are located in the city centre and in out‐of‐town business parks. A questionnaire survey investigated the views of occupiers and follow‐up interviews looked more closely at the sustainability performance of the existing stock.

The findings indicate that, as far as occupiers are concerned, the strongest drivers are consumer demand and staff demand. Green features of a building appear to rank low in the overall building selection preference structure and a willingness to pay a premium for green features was indicated. The interviews uncovered barriers to progress as well as initiatives to reduce both energy consumption and the environmental impact of office space.

The paper identifies progress and issues which could form obstacles to improving the environmental performance of office buildings. It is argued that there is a need to focus on energy efficiency.

This paper explores the linkage between the perception and use of office space by occupants and how this affects the environmental performance of this space.

Developments in telecommunications over the past few years, especially broadband communications, have demonstrated the benefits and efficiencies that such technologies can bring to office occupiers, for example, the faster and more efficient transfer of data and the use of video conferencing. Institutions in the UK have been slow to react to this change in providing services. The growth in the Internet in the late 1990s led to the development of a new market in real estate and telecommunications, as a number of institutions realised the “value added” to be made from providing telecoms services. However, following the downturn in the economy and the consequent fall‐out within the IT and telecoms sector, including the collapse of a number of telecoms providers, the market for providing these services appears to have been reduced. However, despite this, research still continues to demonstrate demand for such services from office occupiers. A recent survey by OFTEL shows that 63 per cent of businesses are connected to the Internet, although a significant proportion of these still use a traditional dial‐up connection, suggesting significant scope for the growth of broadband services. Similarly, a survey of Thames Valley office occupiers has shown that nearly 90 per cent of occupiers consider high‐speed communications to be “important” or “vital” to their business. With this in mind, the paper develops earlier research by the authors to consider the role of developers in the provision of broadband communications. In particular, the research seeks, through interviews with key developers and broadband suppliers active within the Thames Valley office market, to establish what (if anything) they are doing to promote broadband communications within their developments, their vision for the future supply of such services and the benefits arising from providing such services.

Reports on a study examining the interrelationships between manufacturing firms and their accommodation in the rented sector of the industrial property market and conducted among occupiers of rented and industrial property. Discusses occupier satisfaction with rented industrial property. Discusses occupier satisfaction with rented industrial property and the causes of occupier dissatisfaction. Emphasizes the complex pattern of relationships between firms and their buildings.