Do you want to increase revenue in your property or portfolio?
Outside of increasing your occupancy, maximizing the rentable square footage (RSF) is the next best thing. The more RSF you have, the more revenue you can generate with your building. You might think your RSF can’t change. After all, you’ve already measured your building. Without additions, there’s little opportunity to increase RSF.
However, if you aren’t using the latest measurement standards, you aren’t maximizing your RSF. Building features like vertical penetrations and exterior amenities aren’t counted in pre-BOMA 2017 methods. So, your building could have more RSF that you haven’t uncovered yet.
So, how can you find hidden RSF to increase your revenue?
The first step is to measure your building with updated measurement standards. Another way to uncover RSF is to visualize your floorplans, which helps you stay on top of any building changes. And, to increase RSF across your portfolio, you need visibility into every building.
Wondering how you can find hidden RSF in your building? Here are 3 steps to maximize building RSF – and generate more revenue.
Step 1: Remeasure and Recalculate Your Building
The first way to find hidden RSF is to remeasure and recalculate your building.
Remeasure
If your RSF is based on old plans or your building has had a lot of changes, remeasuring it can help you find additional RSF. Old plans don’t accurately reflect every aspect of your building as it is today, so you could have more RSF than you think.
And, if your building has had a lot of changes, your RSF likely doesn’t take them into account. You could have added exterior amenities, reduced common areas, or any number of other changes. But, you won’t reap the RSF benefits of these changes – like earning more rental revenue – unless you remeasure your building.
Recalculate
Recalculating your building with the latest calculation standards is another way to uncover hidden RSF.
If your building is calculated with any BOMA method other than BOMA 2017, you’re not maximizing your RSF. The first calculation method is BOMA 1996. This method doesn’t allow for a single load factor to be applied to the entire building – resulting in constantly changing RSF.
BOMA 2010 has two calculation methods (A and B). While BOMA 2010 more equally distributes common areas, making inefficient buildings (those with a lot of common areas) more marketable, it doesn’t factor in several parts of your building into RSF.
BOMA 2017 is the most recent building calculation standard. Aspects of your building – like exterior amenities and vertical penetrations (like stairs or elevators) – that weren’t counted in previous methods can now be factored into your RSF. Because of these changes, using BOMA 2017 can help you uncover additional RSF – and increase your revenue.
If you’re in New York (or a few other markets) you can also measure your building with REBNY. More aggressive than BOMA, REBNY aims to maximize RSF – which usually exceeds the gross building area with this method.
The building calculation method you use heavily impacts your RSF, so it’s important to keep your measurements up to date. But, it can be hard to accurately recalculate your building. Especially if you rely on architectural firms to do it – because they prioritize new construction over remeasurement.
An easier way to remeasure and recalculate your building is with space management software that has measurement services and uses the newest calculation standards. With expert guidance, space management software can help you find hidden RSF – without the costly expense of hiring an architectural firm. So, you can generate more revenue, while keeping your expenses down.
Step 2: Visualize Building Changes
Another way to find hidden RSF is to stay on top of building changes by visualizing your building.
Do you have easily accessible and up to date floorplans? If not, it can be hard to keep up with building changes.
For example, you might add exterior amenities or reduce common areas. But, these increases in RSF aren’t reflected in the floorplans you show to prospective tenants. Even worse, you’re undercharging tenants for space usage because you haven’t updated the RSF to reflect these changes.
Without a way to easily visualize your building, it’s hard to track these changes. The traditional way to visualize floorplans starts with asking your architectural firm for a copy of them. You might wait for days or weeks just to receive your floorplans. Then, you have to use costly CAD software to read the floorplans to see if they’re up to date.
If not, you have to ask your architectural firm to update the floorplans, which can take weeks or months. At this point, any additional revenue you can get from RSF gains hardly seems worth it. So, you continue undercharging tenants – keeping you from maximizing revenue.
An easier way to visualize your building to keep up with changes is to use space management software. With this software, you can quickly pull up floorplans – without expensive CAD software. And, you can easily edit the floorplans to reflect building changes. That way, you can keep track of building changes – and always charge tenants for maximum RSF.
Visualizing building changes is the second way to uncover hidden RSF and increase your revenue.
Step 3: Increase Portfolio Visibility
Along with remeasuring your building and visualizing changes, having portfolio-wide visibility is another way to increase building RSF and revenue.
For maximized revenue, it’s important to know what’s happening at each building and across your portfolio. If you don’t know what’s happening in your building, you can’t find ways to increase RSF – and your revenue. Instead, you’re unaware of changes and opportunities for improvement.
Without visibility, there’s little chance your buildings will be more profitable in a year than they are today. To help your portfolio continue to earn more, you have to know what’s happening in each building – in terms of tenant turnover, added amenities, or space reorganization (to name a few).
But, with so many moving parts, it can be hard to keep track of every building to spot trends for improvement in RSF. Space management software can increase your visibility with a dashboard overview. In this dashboard, you can see vacancies, RSF, and even trends for future growth and how to achieve it.
With these insights, you can easily spot revenue increasing opportunities – like uncounted vertical penetrations to increase RSF. By capitalizing on these revenue increasing insights, you can maximize profitability in your building.
The last way to find hidden RSF and increase your revenue is to increase visibility into your portfolio.
Wrapping It Up
The more RSF your building has, the more revenue you can generate from your tenants. But, you might think RSF is static – leaving little opportunity to find more and increase your revenue.
Fortunately, that’s not the case. By using the newest measurement standards – like BOMA 2017 or REBNY – you can find additional RSF that’s left out of older standards. And, by visualizing building changes, you can make sure you notice any changes that increase RSF. Plus, with portfolio visibility, you can spot ways to increase RSF across your building.
But, remeasuring your building, visualizing changes, and having portfolio visibility can be time-consuming and expensive to do. That’s where space management software comes in. With expert guidance, it’s easy to remeasure your building. And, you can quickly pull up and edit floorplans to stay on top of building changes. Plus, a dashboard overview makes it a breeze to increase visibility across your portfolio.
That way, you can find hidden RSF and increase your revenue.
Looking for space management software? Consider using Prism. With Prism’s space management module, it’s easy to remeasure your building, visualize floorplan changes, increase visibility, and more.
View our on-demand webinar to learn how to improve asset value from someone who has been in your shoes – The Feil Organization increased RSF by 7% for an ROI of $11M on a 3-tower mixed-use office complex in New Orleans.
