Silence is a number too
Desmond explains why the pause after you name a price does more work than the price itself, with three deals from his career where saying nothing changed the outcome.
Negotiating rent with a landlord who holds all the cards
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Show notes
Negotiating rent with a landlord who holds all the cards
A cafe owner in Austin has been handed a 30 percent rent increase at renewal and is convinced she has no choice. Desmond walks through the leverage she actually holds, and the conversation she ends up having.
- Why a sitting tenant is worth more to a landlord than an empty unit
- Finding the real vacancy rate on the street, not the one the agent quotes
- Trading term length, fit-out and rent-free months for a lower number
- The written proposal that beats a phone call
- What she got, and the one thing she gave up to get it
The one-page proposal template is on the show page for anyone facing a renewal.
Transcript
Welcome back to Walk Away Money. Desmond Whitfield here. This week we have a cafe owner in Austin who got a letter from her landlord saying the rent is going up thirty percent at renewal. She called me and the first thing she said was, I have no leverage, he owns the building. I hear that a lot, and it is almost never true. So we are going to go through the four kinds of leverage a sitting tenant has, starting with the simple fact that an empty unit earns a landlord nothing. We will find the real vacancy rate on her street, work out what she can trade, and write a one-page proposal that turns a phone argument into a business conversation. Then she tells us what happened, and what she had to give up. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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