Carlton Plaza Office for Lease - Rent Woodland Hills Office

 CARLTON PLAZA, a 153,909 square foot, beautiful brick and black glass deluxe office building, offers efficiently designed office space creating a professional atmosphere while retaining the flexibility to service both full floor and multiple tenant users. The articulated space and open balconies of CARLTON PLAZA not only enhance, but make possible numerous outside corners for executive offices to create that special work environment that is both functional and dramatic. CARLTON PLAZA, 20750 Ventura Boulevard, Woodland Hills located on Ventura Boulevard and Kelvin Avenue, south of the 101 Ventura Freeway and just east of De Soto, directly across from Target. The Carlton Plaza office building has close proximity to Woodland Hills Kaiser Permanente Hospital, Warner Center Offices, Westfield Shopping Center on Topanga Canyon, Warner Center Marriott, Pierce College and Taft High School, Shopping, Dining and Entertainment. A variety of newly built luxury lifestyle apartments are also available in the area.
Woodland Hills includes the area of Warner Center located in the San Fernando Valley. Woodland Hills is just east of Calabasas and west of Tarzana with Warner Center at the most northern section. To the north, Woodland Hills is next to West Hills and Canoga Park. To the south of Woodland Hills are the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains.
The 101 Ventura Freeway and Ventura Boulevard are the east and west main transportation hubs. Public transportation is now more widely available with recent opening of the Orange Line with stops at Warner Center.
Other thoroughfares close by are De Soto, Canoga Ave, Warner Ranch Rd, Warner Center Ln, Owensmouth Ave, Califa St, Variel Ave, Erwin St, Serrania, Kelvin Ave, Topanga Canyon Blvd, Vanowen St, Victory, Oxnard St, Ventura Blvd, Burbank Blvd, Clarendon St, 101 Ventura Freeway.

Servicing the Los Angeles County & Ventura County and surrounding areas of the San Fernando Valley & Conejo Valley: Chatsworth, Canoga Park, Winnetka, West Hills, Woodland Hills, Warner Center, Reseda, Van Nuys, Granada Hills, North Hills, Northridge, Porter Ranch, Tarzana, Encino, Sherman Oaks, Valley Village, Studio City, Lake View Terrace, Lake Balboa, Shadow Hills, Sun Valley, Sunland, Tujunga, Toluca Lake, Valley Glen, North Hollywood, Sylmar, Van Nuys, San Fernando, Arleta, Panorama City, Pacoima, Burbank, Glendale, Hidden Hills, Calabasas, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village, Newberry Park, Thousand Oaks, Oak Park.

Operating Expenses Pass Through – What extra costs am I responsible for?

Office buildings traditionally use a lease type called a Full Service Gross (FSG) lease.  This lease means your rent already includes taxes, insurance, utilities, repairs and maintenance, etc. except for your phone and internet.  It might seem that other than your fixed annual increase, this is the extent to your rent costs. However that is not always the case.  Pass through costs represent the share of a buildings operating expenses (Taxes, Insurance, utilities, repairs and maintenance, etc.) that the landlord passes on to the tenant each year.  A tenant will have the responsibility to pay their share of any increases in Operational Costs over their “base year”.  The Base Year is referred as the buildings Operating Costs of the 1^st year of the lease and is typically calculated to a “gross up” 95% occupancy level.  The ability to pass through Operating Expenses enables the Landlord to protect themselves against increases in cost due to inflation and other similar forces.  Most common leases favor the landlord and provides them with the ability to pass through these increases.

The landlord typically provides the tenant with their estimated share of Operating Expenses for the projected year based upon previous yearly Operating Expenses.  The tenant will pay 1/12 of their estimated Operating Expenses each month. At the end of each year, the landlord may provide to the tenant a final statement of the actual expenses for the prior year and either the landlord to refund the overpayment or tenant to pay the outstanding difference in balance.  

Putting a cap on annual “controllable expenses” (Building Service Contracts, Personal Salaries, Management Expenses, Capital Expenditures) is a way tenants can protect themselves from excessive pass through costs.   Also requiring the landlord to deliver to a tenant at the end of each year a detailed statement of the actual operating expenses for the prior year will affirm the pass though amount is correct.  On your lease be sure that the specific calculation to your percentage of space is stated and be aware of specific lease language on operating expenses that allows for additional expenses to be backed in.    

Leasing Space? What you need to know! BOMA, Rentable vs. Usable

Buildings are typically measured using a standing method called “building owners and managers association” or BOMA measurement standards. 1915 BOMA first published an accepted and approved methodology of floor measurement for office buildings by the American National Standards institute.  As design standards have changed throughout the years, so has the way BOMA measurement standards are used.

Area calculations from field measurements will most likely never be exactly the same, but considered accurate when results are within 2% or less.

Building measurements are given in terms of Rentable Square Foot (RSF) and Useable Square Foot (USF).  The RSF is the USF plus the Common Areas.  Common areas are considered to be restrooms, elevator lobby, hallways, stairwells, mechanical rooms, etc. These areas are not exclusive to any one tenant, but are shared by all tenants.  Let’s say for example the total RSF of an office building is 10,000 sq. ft. and the Common Area is 1,500 sq. ft .  10,000 sq. ft. - 1,500 sq. ft. = 8,500 sq. ft. of USF.

 A Load Factor is a multiplier to a tenant's USF that accounts for the tenant's proportionate share of the common area.  A load factor can typically range from 15% to as high as 30% for a multi-tenant floor.  In the above example the load factor is 1,500/10,000=15%

For example, leasing a 2,000 sq. ft. office space with a Load Factor of 15% would give you (2,000 sq. ft. – 15% = 1,700 sq. ft.) of Useable space.

Higher load factors may not always mean less, as often times other amenities such as atriums and spacious lobbies are appealing to clients and guests.  Also to note, Tenants occupying an entire floor will not have shared hallways or shared bathrooms and can be charged a lower load factor than a tenant on a multi-tenant floor as their common area will be less.  Knowing your load factor can really save you a lot of money.

The Loyal And Wise Commercial Real Estate Investor

There is a difference you know between the loyal and wise investor. I just finished a conversation with an older gentleman, probably in his 80's and owns about 5 industrial properties in the valley.  But before the conversation could develop much further he said, "I work with x#$%^, in fact Eric I can't even give you my middle name without x#$%^ being involved.  He was probably too old to want to do anything in real estate anyways. So I moved on... 

I once heard from a very successful real estate investor in Los Angeles say (Portfolio of an excess of $500 million), "You want to know as many brokers you possibly can."   It's pretty simple; you never know when they will bring you the next bet opportunity FIRST. Should I remind you it's the broker who's on the frontline looking to uncover the property with the right story.  You always hope that when they find an interesting deal, they will immediately think of you first.

The best deals never hit the market and that's a fact! 

There are occasions when you find that one investors who will not do a deal without their own Broker and believe me they are far and few between. And most of the time there is something mentally wrong with them. There is however, a successful investor I know out there (Owns in excess of 50K multi-housing units) who has loyalty to a broker.  He's in a category by himself, and like I said mentally wrong.  But most of the deals that are executed by that one loyal investor would have already been shopped around by everyone else by the time it came to them.  They start to get that reputation. "The guy who's married to so and so". Oh, and please don't remind me of the investor who says his relative has a real estate licenses and wants a piece of the pie. Are you kidding me....

I truly believe loyalty if acted upon correctly is vital to succeed in the business, but any investor looking to grow their portfolio needs to be the wise about it.