Landlord Services

GCL’s agency team are acknowledged experts in the field of food and beverage and convenience store retailing. Through their unrivalled expertise in the field of turnover rents, GCL have for many years been securing the maximum affordable rent for schemes they are retained on. By adopting this philosophy, GCL are re-aligning the interests of the landlord and the tenant and thus creating long term partnerships, viable business units and ensuring that leases have a robustness and flexibility to deal with the vagaries (both known and unknown) of the trading environment.

GCL's philosophy is to move away from traditional and blunt methods of letting property by Zone As or rates per sq ft.  This has proved to be successful. We have delivered strong growth in rents by securing sensible turnover provisions. Also this methodology leads to a reduction in business failures.

When Turnover rents cannot be agreed this method of basing rents on agreed business plans do still have the benefit of being more sustainable and increases the tenants chances of succeeding whilst still paying a fair and affordable rent.

The issues with traditional methods of letting properties are:

• Not matching rent to tenants’ ability to pay
• Dependent on uncertain rent reviews for growth
• No growth for five years with traditional rent reviews
• Can lead to retailers either paying too much rent or not enough, both of which causes problems
• Does not allow for changes in market conditions

Advances in the travel sector market pioneered by GCL through turnover rents and reaching an agreed P&L with each individual tenant can now be seen as being beneficial for all sectors of the retail market.  The ability to work with tenants to ensure that the maximum affordable rent is defined and agreed ensures the following beneficial results.

• Intervention by the landlord to encourage growth leads directly to increased rent
• Landlords are encouraged to, and are also rewarded by, investing in the site because of the turnover-rent mechanism
• Base rents should move up annually
• Tenants are far more able to deal with the varieties of the market
• Reduced vacancy rates

GCL have recently been appointed to replicate the success of the motorway service area and travel market in High Street and shopping centre locations.  The philosophy of working with tenants to secure the maximum affordable rent applies equally well to shopping centres and high streets as it does to travel destinations.  If the events of 2020 have taught us anything, it is that the Zone A and rate per sq ft are now inappropriate ways to calculate rent and have become meaningless.

Tenant diversity, rents linked to tenants’ turnover, acknowledging that different tenants can afford different levels of rent using food and beverage and leisure as the new anchors are the keys to successful asset management of high street and shopping centre properties.

Our experienced Commercial Property Management team can handle every aspect of your property needs, no matter the size of your portfolio. We can provide service charge management for budgets of any size and complexity, administer leases, deliver planned maintenance programmes and handle reactive repair issues. GCL’s philosophy is to fully understand our clients’ asset goals, to have a detailed knowledge of every building we manage, and to develop beneficial relationships with tenants. We believe that effective day to day management of your portfolio is essential to developing the value of the asset.

We:

• deliver optimised property management services bespoke to your needs and portfolio
• pride ourselves in maintaining excellent, proactive, relationships with you and your tenants
• provide reassurance that your property is being looked after by a highly experienced team
• ensure that your properties are inspected regularly and remain maintained, safe, secure, clean and compliant
• have experience managing a range of properties including retail, office, leisure, motorway service areas and shopping centres

We strive to deliver excellent customer service and are proud to have a number of long-standing clients – some of which have been with us for over 14 years. Our belief is that building these long-term relationships is mutually beneficial for all parties and leads to a more successful working relationship.

Contact us to find out how we can optimise, and take the stress out of, managing your property.

The Accountancy Team at GCL understand that information and communication are key to the successful financial management of your assets. Our primary concern is the timely demanding and collection of all amounts due whether it be rent, service charge, insurance or direct charges. We work with clients to determine the appropriate levels, methods and formats of reporting based on individual needs and do not subscribe to a one size fits all approach.

GCL believe that good tenant/landlord relationships and a personal approach are key to addressing tenant arrears, and use this to achieve excellent collection rates. We also believe that proactivity is fundamental to our success and regularly review industry data and credit checking software to predict if any tenants might be exposed. We are proud of the fact that in fourteen years we have only had to instruct bailiffs four times!

We are happy to adhere to your reporting requests whether those be monthly, quarterly or ad hoc. We utilise TRAMPS for our property accountancy function but have created many bespoke reports for clients using the raw data. Additionally we are competent in utilising clients' own existing reports if necessary. As information is paramount to the understanding of how your asset is functioning we maintain strict deadlines for all reporting and are quick to respond to requests for additional reports whether they be one off or cyclical.

At GCL we fully subscribe to the use of turnover rents to achieve the maximum value rental income from tenants. We acknowledge that the process of collecting, analysing and subsequent demanding of turnover rents and base rent uplifts geared to turnover can be a cumbersome and time consuming process. Our expert experience in this area includes a thorough review of the terms of turnover, application of closure and suspension of trading clauses, and on-going reviews of turnover to determine and challenge inconsistencies.