Retail, Offices & Commercial Real Estate
Commercial Leasing & Value
How leases, tenant mix, and covenant strength drive commercial value.
The promise
Read a lease for the terms that drive value — and use them in negotiation and valuation.
By the end you can
- Abstract a lease to its value-driving terms
- Link lease structure to asset value
- Compare deals on total occupancy cost
- Frame a leasing recommendation
Where this course takes you
This course is part of 3 role tracks. Each ends in a professional deliverable and stacks toward a named certificate.
You'll produce: A business plan for an asset — value-creation levers, leasing strategy, capex, ESG, and a hold / sell view.
Asset Management & Value Creation certificateYou'll produce: A leasing or occupier strategy — options shortlist, rent and total-occupancy-cost comparison, negotiation points, and a recommendation.
Commercial Leasing & Occupier Strategy certificateYou'll produce: A portfolio occupancy strategy — space demand, lease events, consolidation options, and a cost plan.
Corporate Occupier Strategy certificateCurriculum
Reading a Lease
The lease is the asset. Learn to read term, break options, rent reviews and the gross/net/triple-net spectrum that determines who bears cost.
Rent, Incentives and Effective Rent
Headline rent flatters. Learn rent-free periods, fit-out contributions and service-charge recovery, and compute the effective rent that actually reaches the landlord.
Covenant, WAULT and Income Security
Not all income is equal. Assess covenant strength, weight lease terms into WAULT, and see how tenant quality, lease length and voids drive value.
Retail Tenant Mix and Value from Income
Bring it together in retail: catchment and tenant mix, anchors and footfall, turnover rent, and the capitalisation that turns secure income into value.
Applied Toolkit & Templates
Copy-ready templates and working sheets for leasing and occupier work: lease abstracts, effective-rent calculators, WAULT and covenant tracking, retail tenant-mix planning, and occupier requirements briefs. Each template includes how-to-use guidance and common mistakes to avoid.
Course assessment
Sign in to open lessons and track your progress.
The capstone project
This course ends in a real professional deliverable. Complete the course — including the capstone — and your certificate is issued automatically.
Your final deliverable
Leasing Strategy Capstone
Produce a decision-ready strategy of roughly one to two pages containing:
- Shortlist / target and terms — the target tenant (Brief A) or shortlisted building type (Brief B), with the proposed or sought lease terms: headline rent basis, incentives, term, break, review, service charge.
- Effective-rent and total-occupancy-cost comparison — the method applied to compare options on effective rent per sqm and on total occupancy cost (rent + service charge + rates), with a worked structure using placeholders where figures require local market data.
- Income-security assessment — WAULT to break and to expiry, and a covenant grade for the key tenant(s), with the reasoning.
- Negotiation points — the three to five levers you will trade (e.g. headline for incentives, term for break, covenant for concession), and your fallback position on each.
- Recommendation — a single, clear recommended course of action and the one risk you are most watching.
The output should read like advice a client could act on, show the correct method throughout, and never fabricate market figures.
Graded on five criteria
- Method & rigour — The right framework, applied correctly, with the working shown — not just an answer.
- Data honesty — Every figure is sourced, triangulated, or explicitly flagged “requires local market data”. Nothing is invented.
- Analysis & judgment — Assumptions are explicit, at least one alternative is weighed, and the key risks are quantified.
- Recommendation — A clear, decision-useful conclusion a professional could act on — with the conditions that qualify it.
- Communication — Structured, concise, and client-ready — the argument lands.
Pass criteria
A submission passes when it meets the bar on all five criteria — the work is something a competent professional could put in front of a client or committee. The Verified Professional credential is issued on a pass.
Resubmission
Work that isn't there yet comes back marked “needs work” with specific feedback. You revise and resubmit — there is no penalty and no limit on attempts.
More in this academy
Occupier & Tenant Representation
Advising occupiers and representing tenants: reading the occupier's business need, defining requirements, comparing stay-vs-go and lease-vs-own, and negotiating on the tenant's behalf.
Winning Business: Lead Generation & Client Development
Build a durable business development system for commercial brokerage: define a patch and own it, prospect with market insight rather than pleas, grow referrals and professional reputation, and convert interest into signed mandates.