A commercial leasing team should delegate the desk work behind each deal and keep the negotiation. That means the market survey, tour scheduling and tour books, comp pulls, the proposal comparison, LOI version tracking and the weekly leasing report. Cutting the shortlist, setting terms and negotiating stay with the broker or leasing director.

What changed in office this quarter

Manhattan office vacancy fell to 12.6% in the third quarter, down from 14.7% a year earlier and the lowest it's been since before 2020. Trophy vacancy is at 4.9%. JLL's third-quarter research, reported by CRE Daily, says tenants priced out of the top buildings are widening their searches, and Third and Lexington avenues are picking up share (October 5, October 13).

For a tenant rep team, a wider search means a longer survey and more buildings on the shortlist, and each shortlisted building gets its own tour, RFP and comp set. For an agency team or an in-house leasing group, it means more tenant-rep brokers coming through, more tours to follow up on, and more proposals going to asset management for approval. The number of deals can stay flat while the desk hours on each one go up.

Where we draw the line on each step

Most leasing steps have two parts. One part is assembly that follows your format, and the other is a decision the broker makes. This is how we'd split the work on an office leasing team.

  • Market survey. Support person: pulling availability and building the long list in your format, with RSF, asking rent and its lease structure, and operating expenses. Broker: cutting the shortlist.
  • Tours. Support person: scheduling with listing brokers, routing the day, the tour book, same-day notes. Broker: walking the space with the tenant.
  • Comps. Support person: pulling lease comps from CoStar or CompStak for each shortlisted building. Broker: choosing which comps the client sees.
  • Proposals. Support person: sending RFPs, pulling terms from each response, building the total occupancy cost comparison. Broker: setting and negotiating terms.
  • LOIs. Support person: drafting from agreed deal points and tracking what changed each round. Broker: the deal points themselves.
  • Agency and owner side. Support person: flyers, the stacking plan, the weekly leasing report, broker follow-up after tours. Broker: pricing and the approval ask.

Tours are the only step on this list that's partly site-bound. A remote support person can schedule them and build the tour book, and someone local still walks the floor with the tenant.

Start with the proposal comparison

If you hand off one thing first, make it the proposal comparison. It runs on every shortlisted building, it follows a set format, and every number in it traces back to a landlord's proposal, so it's easy to check.

Give your support person a comparison you've already sent to a client so they can match the layout. Set them up in the CRM and the shared drive, and in your comp database where your license allows it. Then run one live search with them from survey to LOI before you hand over a second.

The numbers need a review step. Base rent and escalations, operating expenses, free rent and TI allowance should be checked against the source proposal by a broker or senior associate before the comparison goes to the client. Comparing a full service proposal to an NNN one without adding operating expenses is an easy way for a comparison to come out wrong, and it's worth checking for specifically.

Plan on a short daily check-in for the first two weeks so format questions get answered before they repeat across a whole survey.

After the lease is signed

Someone has to pull the renewal options, notice dates, expansion rights and expiration into a record the client can work from. The work is structured and fully remote, but a missed notice window costs real money, so it needs a named owner and a second check. On the owner side this usually sits with a lease administrator, and our lease administrator page covers what that role owns. The rest of the support roles we place are on the roles page.

Using AI on proposals and LOIs

AI tools can pull the terms out of a landlord proposal, lay them into a comparison and flag what changed between two LOI drafts in a few minutes. They also misread things. A TI allowance quoted per rentable square foot can come back as a lump sum, and a year-three step-up can drop out of the table without any sign that it's missing. Every figure an AI tool produces should be checked against the source proposal by a person before the client sees it.

We build and maintain agents configured to each client's market and internal workflows, delivered through the placed VA in the tools the team already uses. The review step above applies to their output the same way it applies to anyone's. We wrote more about pairing AI with support hires in scaling a CRE team with AI.

Working with Scale Partner

Scale Partner places VAs with commercial real estate teams to run this kind of desk work. Each one is trained before their first day and productive in your tools on day one, works for one client at a time, and comes with a 14-day replacement guarantee. Average tenure runs past twelve months. See how it works.