Flat Fees for Luxury Suite Management

Nicholas Meyer, and Lisa Taylor, Leasing Agent, discuss Downtown Suites’ fees for management of luxury suites.

Nic: At Downtown Suites we specialize in the downtown Vancouver suite market, and a large part of our portfolio are luxury suites, in Yaletown and specifically in Coal Harbour. Many of these suites are worth upwards of two to four million dollars. We are very adept at dealing with that caliber of tenant, and those owners. We are very understanding of their needs which are slightly different. We are very confident and comfortable dealing with higher quality tenants and owners, and especially with higher end properties. We are very good at that, and the bonus to our owners is that we charge $250 as a cap on our fees.

For any suite over $3000, it doesn’t matter how much more it is, our fee is $250. In a lot of cases this now works out to 2,3 or 4%, so we are very very competitive. I know that many of our competitors are still charging the flat 8%. It seems outrageous to me, actually, that somebody could be charging $500-$1000 a month when we are just charging the $250, which I think is reasonable.

Lisa: Especially when we are talking about $6000 rentals, $7500 rentals. We do an extremely good job and we think that $250 is a fair value. And of course our leasing fee is a half month’s rent. That is for all of our suites. That includes the tenant screening, tenant qualifying, the showing of the suite, and making sure that we get a happy and “right fit” tenant, especially in our luxury suites.

Nic: And incidentally, tenants don’t move very frequently in high end suites, they are generally in for several years, so the leasing fee shouldn’t be something to be overly concerned about. Anybody who moves into 2 or 3000 square feet is generally wanting to stay there for quite a long time. I recently had a tenant move out after 20 years in a suite. So it’s essentially $250 a month for our luxury suite management.