WASHINGTON, DC — (Marketwired) — 07/08/15 — The landscape for office leasing has evolved — particularly for small to mid-sized businesses and technology startups. For the first time, JLL (NYSE: JLL) is offering tenants and landlords a choice for adapting to those changes.
— which launches today in Washington, D.C. — is the first online, transactional marketplace for commercial real estate, allowing tenants and landlords to connect and complete their entire real estate transaction online. The platform, , opens a leasing arena that was not previously available to small tenants occupying less than 5,000 square feet.
“Our platform is poised to profoundly change the commercial real estate market,” said , HiRise co-founder and Senior Vice President at JLL. “A huge block of tenants is being underserved. Long leases, large square footage requirements and strict terms are prohibitive and resource-intensive for small- to mid-sized businesses, especially high growth startups. JLL has found a way to ease the pain and anxiety felt by these businesses by providing a marketplace where they can find more transparency, flexibility and choice for their real estate decisions.”
According to JLL research, more than 500,000 U.S. businesses occupy office spaces that are less than 5,000 square feet. In the Washington, D.C. metro area, these users outnumber large tenants three to one, and the average transaction size has dropped 35 percent since 2010. The number of office leases larger than 10,000 square feet have been reduced by half in that timeframe, with the average lease size falling to 4,100 square feet.
HiRise, which was simplifies the user experience for both tenants and landlords. Tenants can secure flexible options — by seat or suite — while landlords can monetize vacant space in a more strategic way.
HiRise simplifies the leasing process by providing potential tenants with ease and flexibility to search, inquire and transact directly with landlords online for office searches based on size, length term, price and location. The platform allows businesses like nimble, high-growth startups to focus on the evolution of their product or idea instead of the uncertainty of their long-term real estate needs.
“HiRise is a brilliant platform,” said CEO Scott Case, who was a founding CEO of Startup America and founding CTO of Priceline.com. “I–ve traveled around the country engaging with startups in dozens of cities and meeting with growing young companies. A consistent need for these firms is space for their teams to work and collaborate, but the state of the leasing market is a terrible experience for them. HiRise delivers flexible space for startups while leveraging the expertise of JLL–s corporate real estate infrastructure.”
Traditionally, the last five percent of many commercial real estate portfolios is difficult to lease, leading to vacant space that landlords often do not actively promote. HiRise offers a model to monetize smaller office spaces for landlords and connect idle supply — that may not have been accessible through current channels — to existing tenant demand.
“HiRise is an ideal catalyst for our portfolio value strategy,” said Chris Mundy, Senior Vice President of Investments at . “It creates a unique opportunity to digitally market our spaces and create a steady pipeline of tenants. With this marketplace, we can reduce downtime and potentially monetize all of our vacant space. It–s exactly the solution we need in today–s market.”
HiRise features office space across 10 neighborhoods and five submarkets, including Georgetown, Crystal City and Alexandria, Virginia. The platform — which currently has a patent pending — was collaboratively developed in Washington, D.C. in 2013 by JLL leadership and its brokers, with the prototype winning JLL–s 2014 Da Vinci innovation award, a global competition in which firm innovators have their ideas incubated and launched firm-wide.
After an evaluation of client needs, Washington, D.C. was selected as the platform–s first market due to the city–s evolving transaction size and vibrant mix of startups, small businesses and government contractors.
“The D.C. technology community really needs this tool,” said Geoff Orazem, Managing Partner of , a government technology and innovation incubator. “Our ecosystem at Eastern Foundry is built on breaking down barriers for tech startups and government contractors so that they can spend more time working on their business, and that–s exactly what HiRise will do for them. Choosing an office is difficult for a growing business, but HiRise has made that process simple and easy so that our clients can spend time on their business strategy.”
To learn more about HiRise, or for landlords and tenants interested in leasing office space in the Washington D.C. area, visit .
HiRise is an online marketplace for office space. This first-of-its-kind platform offers landlords and tenants an open marketplace to lease office space. Backed by global real estate firm JLL, HiRise fundamentally changes the way office space is sought, transacted and shared. This approach minimizes downtime while virtually eliminating legal fees and manpower needed to transact and provides flexibility, access and most importantly, speed to occupancy. Landlords can now efficiently monetize and promote available space directly to tenants at pre-negotiated rates so that the entire lease process is easier. For more information, please visit .
JLL (NYSE: JLL) is a professional services and investment management firm offering specialized real estate services to clients seeking increased value by owning, occupying and investing in real estate. A Fortune 500 company with annual fee revenue of $4.7 billion and gross revenue of $5.4 billion, JLL has more than 230 corporate offices, operates in 80 countries and has a global workforce of approximately 58,000. On behalf of its clients, the firm provides management and real estate outsourcing services for a property portfolio of 3.4 billion square feet, or 316 million square meters, and completed $118 billion in sales, acquisitions and finance transactions in 2014. Its investment management business, LaSalle Investment Management, has $55.3 billion of real estate assets under management. JLL is the brand name, and a registered trademark, of Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. For further information, visit .
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