Someone on your side of the table.
Tenant representation for independent businesses across Los Angeles, Orange County and the Inland Empire. We find the space, read the lease, and negotiate terms working for you, not the landlord.
You run the business.
You're not a real estate professional, and you shouldn't have to become one to sign a lease.
Maybe you’re opening your first location. Maybe you’ve outgrown the one you’re in.
Maybe your term is up in nine months and you’ve just realized you have no idea whether your rent is fair.
The listing broker works for the landlord. We work for you.
What you actually get
We search the whole market, not just what's advertised
We run your requirement through CoStar the database the industry actually uses and work the submarkets directly. Your shortlist includes space that never reaches a public listing site.
You get your own portal
Every property we find goes into a portal built for you. Photos, floorplans, rents, notes. No hunting through a chain of forwarded emails to remember which unit was which.
We keep looking after the first shortlist
Your search stays active. When something new hits the market that fits, we see it and you hear about it. Most searches don’t end on the first tour.
We negotiate the whole lease, not just the rent
Base rent is one line. Tenant improvement allowance, free rent, who pays for the HVAC, how the escalations compound, whether you can renew or expand those decide what the space really costs you across the term.
We tell you what's actually being paid
Asking rates aren’t market rates. We’ll show you where an offer sits against comparable deals nearby, so you know whether a number is a price or an opening position.
Ten things tenants don't negotiate
Not because they’re unreasonable asks. Because nobody told them the asks existed.
The personal guarantee
We run your requirement through CoStar the database the industry actually uses and work the submarkets directly. Your shortlist includes space that never reaches a public listing site.
Free rent
Not just for the build-out. For the months after you open and before you’re profitable, which is when the money is actually tight.
The improvement allowance
How much, who controls the contractor, what “landlord’s standard build-out” means in writing, and when you get reimbursed. Without a spec, it means very little.
A cap on CAM
Common area charges are the line item that grows while you’re not watching. A cap on controllables, often 3 to 5 percent a year, holds it.
What the renewal costs
An option to renew at “market rate” with no floor, no ceiling and no definition is a blank cheque written to your landlord five years from now.
The relocation clause
Common in multi-tenant retail and office, easy to miss, and it lets the landlord move you. Strike it or put boundaries on it.
Exclusivity
Usually nothing stops your landlord leasing the next unit to your direct competitor. Unless your lease says so.
Assignment and subletting
If you ever sell the business, this clause decides whether you can hand over the space. For restaurants and retail, it is the exit.
What happens if delivery is late
If the lease is silent on a landlord delay, you have no defined remedy and very little leverage. Just a delayed opening and an argument.
The holdover rate
Commonly 150 to 200 percent of rent. Negotiable down, and worth pairing with a short extension right so you’re never exposed to it.
Every one of these is negotiable. Most leases we’re handed have none of them negotiated.
We’re brokers, not attorneys. We’ll tell you where you need one.
Term length matters more than people expect
A three-year lease and a five-year lease on identical space are different deals. Longer terms buy you negotiating room on rent and tenant improvements; shorter ones buy you flexibility if the business changes.
We’ll tell you which trade-off suits where you are not which one closes faster.
What working with us looks like
Tell us the requirement
Size, submarket, use, timing, budget. About fifteen minutes.
We formalized the arrangement
A short representation agreement. From that point we’re legally your broker: obliged to act in your interest, and paid by the landlord, not by you.
We search
CoStar plus direct submarket work, filtered to what genuinely fits.
Everything lands in your portal
Reviewed together, with the trade-offs on each.
We tour the shortlist
And we’ll tell you what’s wrong with a building as readily as what’s right.
We negotiate
Letter of intent, counters, and the lease terms beyond the rent.
You sign
We stay in it through execution and handover.
Mostly people signing their first or second commercial lease
Spas
Bakeries
Fitness & martial arts
Swim schools
Auto shops
Fabricators
Smoke shops
Light manufacturing
If that’s you, this is the kind of deal we do every week.
1,000–5,000
Square feet, typical requirement
Retail · Flex · Industrial
Where most of our tenant work sits
LA · OC · Inland Empire
Markets covered
Brands we've put in space
Local operators, regional groups and national brands. Same process for all of them.
Usually nothing.
In most lease transactions the landlord pays the commission, and their listing agreement already sets aside a share for a broker representing the tenant.
If you show up without one, that share generally stays with the landlord’s agent. The same agent whose job is to get the landlord the best deal available.
The money is spent either way. The only question is whether anyone is spending it on your side.
Where a landlord won’t cooperate on fee, you’ll know before you tour anything.
So the only real question is whether you walk into that negotiation with someone on your side, or without.
Or call 1-888-KEYZ-101 and ask us anything first. No agreement, no obligation.
A year with the last broker. Two months with us.
Core Spaces needed a temporary leasing office in Fullerton. They came to us having already spent nearly a year looking.
Before us
What we did
Worked the Fullerton market directly for two months. Brought them the right listings rather than all of them, and ruled out the wrong buildings before they got attached to any.
Negotiated
The lease went through four rounds of redlines between the two sides before it was signed. Rent is one line in a document that long.
Outcome
"He didn't just bring listings to our attention; he brought the right listings."
“Before meeting Jason Keyz, we were with another broker for nearly a year, filled with countless roadblocks and disappointments… It was clear from the start that Jason wasn’t just in this to close a deal. He was in it to find us our perfect space, no matter how challenging the search… It’s not just that Jason found us a space; he found us the perfect space.”
★★★★★
Ben Modleski
Core Spaces
Google review
We run the same process whether it’s one unit or a portfolio. The only difference is how many buildings we have to rule out first.
The ones we get asked
Do I have to sign something to work with you?
A representation agreement, and it’s the document that works in your favour, not ours. It’s what makes us legally your broker rather than a helpful stranger, what obliges us to act in your interest, and what lets the landlord pay our fee instead of you. It’s short, it’s for a defined term, and we’ll walk you through every line before you sign it. Tenants who skip this step are the ones negotiating alone.
I already found a space myself. Can you still help?
Usually, and you should let us. Finding the building is the easy part; what it costs you over five years is decided in the negotiation that comes next, and that’s the part you’d otherwise do alone against the landlord’s broker. One condition: call us before you tour it or fill in a form on a listing site. Once another agent has registered you on the property, your options narrow and we may not be able to represent you on it.
How long does this take?
Sixty to a hundred and twenty days from first tour to keys is typical, depending on the build-out and the permitting. Restaurants and medical run longer. We’ll give you a real calendar in the first week.
What will the landlord want to see from me?
Depends on your entity. Sole traders, partnerships and corporations each get asked for a different package: generally tax returns, bank statements and a credit report. We’ll send the exact list and put it together so you present well.
What if I'd rather renew than move?
Then let’s negotiate the renewal properly. A renewal where you never looked at the alternatives isn’t a negotiation. It’s an acceptance, and landlords price it that way. Having us quietly test the market is often the cheapest leverage you’ll ever buy.
Do you cover my area?
Los Angeles, Orange County and the Inland Empire are where most of our tenant work sits, but we also run searches across the Coachella Valley, the Imperial Valley and parts of Central California. Tell us where you need to be and let us tell you whether we can do it; that call costs you nothing and takes ten minutes. On the rare requirement genuinely outside our reach, we’ll say so and introduce you to a broker we know.
Send us the lease
Attach it below with a line about your business. We’ll read the business terms, tell you what we’d push back on, and come back to you within one business day.
Prefer to talk?
Actually here for something else?
Commercial real estate looks completely different depending on which side of the table you’re on.