Whether you’re a tenant looking for your next premises or a landlord wondering why your space isn’t attracting the right people, it’s worth understanding what makes a space genuinely difficult to occupy — not just on day one, but two or three years in when the novelty has worn off.
Here are three types of spaces I’d think twice about, and what I’d want both sides of the lease to understand before committing.
1. Spaces With Inadequate or Poorly Managed Shared Facilities
Shared toilets, shared car parking, shared rubbish collection, shared cleaning responsibilities — any of these can become a daily source of conflict if they’re not set up and managed well.
It’s rarely one big incident that causes the problem. It’s the slow accumulation of small frustrations: the car park that’s never quite fairly allocated, the bathrooms that are always someone else’s responsibility to clean, the rubbish that builds up because nobody’s clear on whose job it is. These things chip away at the working environment and the landlord-tenant relationship alike.
Before leasing a space with shared facilities, I’d want to see clear, written provisions in the lease covering how each facility is managed, who’s responsible, and how disputes are handled. If that clarity isn’t there, I’d either negotiate it in or seriously consider whether the space is worth the friction.
2. Spaces With Poor Visitor Access
It’s easy to think about visitor access in terms of your clients — can they find you, can they park, can they get in without calling three times? But the people who need to access your premises go well beyond that.
Think about the service technician who can’t find the building entrance and ends up on the phone with your receptionist for ten minutes. Think about the support organisation, the courier, the IT contractor, the health and safety inspector. Every one of those visits that starts with confusion ends up costing someone time and admin. Multiply that across a year and it adds up.
When I look at a space, I want to know: is it clearly signposted from the street? Is there somewhere practical for a visitor to park without blocking operations? Is the entrance obvious? These sound like small things, but they’re the kind of small things that become a running frustration for whoever manages the premises day to day.
3. Buildings With No Active Property Management
It’s a question most tenants never think to ask: who actually manages this building, and what happens when something goes wrong?
In a well-managed building, there’s a clear point of contact for maintenance issues, a process for getting things fixed, and someone keeping an eye on the health of the building over time. In a poorly managed one — or one with no active management at all — maintenance requests disappear, common areas deteriorate, and tenants are left chasing an owner who may be hard to reach and slow to act.
For tenants, this becomes a daily frustration that affects your business environment and your staff. For landlords, it’s a false economy — deferred maintenance and poor tenant relationships cost significantly more to fix than they would have to prevent. Before leasing a space, find out who manages the building, how responsive they are, and what the current tenants think of them. That last one is worth more than anything written in the lease.
The Common Thread
Each of these issues shares something in common: they’re easy to overlook when you’re excited about a space, and surprisingly hard to fix once you’re in. The best time to ask the hard questions is before you sign — not six months into a three-year lease.
If you’re currently assessing a commercial space in Christchurch and want a second opinion, we’re happy to take a look with you.
Get in touch with South Town Management — hello@southtown.nz