Various Forms of Barter that Pay the Rent

During these uncertain times, you may be faced with hard decisions like relocating your business or even how you are going to afford your rental office space. But even now, there are opportunities and options available to you thanks to IMS.

There is a surplus of available options because of the oversupply of office, retail, and light industrial space throughout the U.S., years of overbuilding along with the softening demand, due to harder times, translates into a real buyer’s market.

That’s why aggressive landlords are acting like Santa Clause… increasing allowances to tenants for adding walls and other interior design features… installing carpeting.. And paying moving expenses. In addition, free rent of six months to a year, in exchange for a five year lease, isn’t uncommon today.

Here’s a couple of suggestions for making your negotiating efforts even more profitable:

1. Use your barter knowledge and contacts by offering to pay for the improvements and moving yourself - in exchange for credit against the monthly rent. (Do so on a dollar for dollar basis, i.e. if you put in $4,000 worth of improvements, you get $4,000 credit against the rents due, which can be arranged over a series of months if need be.) Then secure these improvements through the vendors in the IMS network.


2. Sell the landlord on the idea of accepting a percentage of the monthly rent in trade dollars. (You may be the first tenant to ever propose this idea. Your IMS Broker can assist you in this effort).


3. Ask the landlord for “his business” if you can supply a service or product they use regularly. As small business owners, we must make this action a regular habit. It’ll pay off for you. In fact, in the cutthroat international arena America’s largest multinational corporations aggressively compete and win over their European and Asian business adversaries by following just such a tactic. They call it “offset trading.” Essentially it boils down to this message, “Look, you do business with us and we will do business with you.” (We will buy your products, or will build a factory in your country which will employ thousands, etc.) Of course, your offset arrangement is a little simpler, but it’s the same idea - every month you write a check to your landlord, and in return he writes you a check back for some of your products/services.

If you have questions or would like assistance from your IMS Broker, they are waiting for your call!