Landlords come from Venus and tenants from Mars. They don’t understand each others interests. That’s why five leading real estate advisors have set up the new real estate knowledge institute, the Corporate Real Estate Federation.
One of the focus areas of the Corporate Real Estate Federation (CREF) is the ROZ model rental agreement for offices. “With the ROZ-model there is a lot wrong”, says Leon van Leersum, partner at Redept, one of the intiators of CREF. “It is tenant unfriendly. Their interests are snowed under by those of the landlords and therefore are underrepresented.” CREF is currently in discussion with the board of the ROZ about the ‘leaden’ model. “The ROZ is a bastion of landlords and developers, we hope that they concede. If they aren’t prepared to move, then we will publish our own model. Although I hope that won’t be necessary.” Van Leersum says that CREF represents 80% of tenants in The Netherlands in the battle for a better model rental agreement.
He emphasises that any new contract should be well-balanced, “We will certainly not exaggerate the tenant’s side as a protest. A good model contract should be such that everyone can use it.”
CREF – that as well as Redept was initiated by AOS Studley, AT Osborne, Procore and Twynstra Gudde – will discuss current themes in as far as possible. “We notice that the market actually knows very little about the specific area of corporate real estate. The translation to the enterprise’s strategy does not get made. Landlords see real estate as investment product and for tenants an office is a factor of production. One comes from Venus, the other from Mars. With this knowledge institute we want to achieve that they understand each other.”
