Five Keys to Finding Your Next Commercial Space
A conversation with Trevor Brooks, Lorex Real Estate
I have said before that some people are like onions. The more you talk to them, the more layers you find, and the more impressed you become. Trevor Brooks is exactly that kind of person. I knew I liked him the first time we shook hands. But the more I have learned about him over the years, the more that feeling has grown.
Trevor is a commercial real estate broker with Lorex Real Estate in downtown Brighton, and he brings something to this work that most brokers cannot offer: he has lived it. Before real estate, Trevor owned and operated a UPS Store franchise in Howell for 18 years. He signed leases, dealt with landlords, made mistakes, and learned from all of it. That experience is exactly what led him to get his license and build a practice around helping other business owners understand their options, know their rights, and take the intimidation out of finding commercial space.
For our tenth episode of the Pro Concepts podcast, Trevor put together five things he sees come up over and over again with clients. These are not abstract concepts. They are the real issues that trip people up, often before they even realize it.
1. Owning versus renting: understand what you are actually deciding.
Everybody wants to own. Building equity, holding an asset, not paying someone else's mortgage. The logic is easy to follow, and the appeal is real. But Trevor sees people get so locked into the idea of ownership that they narrow their search down to for-sale listings only, miss better options, and sometimes end up making no decision at all.
The commercial real estate market is not like residential. It is far more specific in its use. What works for one business may be entirely wrong for another, and the pool of buyers for any given commercial property is much smaller. One of Trevor's longtime mentors put it to him plainly: it is easy to buy and hard to sell. That truth carries real weight when you are talking about a property that may sit on the market for a year or more if your needs change.
If you are an owner-user, you also need to wear two hats. One belongs to the CEO who needs the space to run a great business. The other belongs to the landlord evaluating the investment. Keep those two sets of pros and cons completely separate. The building exists to support the operation inside it. If owning the wrong building starts to bottleneck that operation, you have made the wrong call. The golden goose is the business. Everything else is in service of that.
2. Price is an important factor. It is not the most important factor.
Most people begin their commercial space search with a budget in mind and filter everything through that lens first. Trevor's advice is to flip that sequence entirely. Start by identifying the right space for your business, considering location, visibility, signage, road access, tenant mix, and long-term fit. Then ask whether it makes fiscal sense.
Location is the one thing you cannot change after you move in. A beautiful interior in a poor location is a problem you will never fully solve. Moving is expensive and disruptive, and once you are committed to a lease, you are committed. It is worth spending a little more now to be in a space that serves your business well for the next seven to ten years than to save on rent and face a costly move in three.
Trevor also made a point that stuck with me: before you even start looking, sit down with your financial planner and your CPA. Get clear on where the business is going and what it actually needs. Most people skip that planning step entirely, and it costs them later.
3. Just right is never enough, but neither is too much.
Finding the balance between what you need now and what you will need later is one of the harder parts of this process. Lease too little because you want to keep overhead low, and you may box yourself in before you have a real chance to grow. Lease too much because you are optimistic about where things are headed, and you are paying for space that is not generating any return on day one.
Trevor shared a story about a newly licensed insurance agent, full of energy and enthusiasm, who wanted to start his first office with 3,000 square feet because he was certain he would have 18 people working there within a year. The advice Trevor gave him was direct: rent starts on day one. Overhead starts on day one. If you set yourself up with more space than your current reality can support, you may never get the chance to grow into it. Be realistic, plan thoughtfully, and find the middle ground.
4. Do not let zoning stop you before you have started.
Zoning does not come up in every transaction, but when it does, Trevor sees people walk away from the right property because they assume the process is too complicated. His message here is simple: do not let that stop you.
What a property is zoned for today is just what someone decided made sense at the time it was zoned, and that decision may be decades old. Municipalities want to see their properties used. They want to see businesses succeed and communities grow. Most planning discussions are far less difficult than people imagine. If the location is right, the size works, and you can see your business thriving there, have the conversation. The rezoning process, even when it takes time, is worth pursuing for the right property.
When you are searching online, Trevor's suggestion is not to filter by zoning use from the start. Find the right property first, and then figure out whether the use can be made to work.
5. Your relationship with your landlord matters more than the lease.
The lease exists to protect both parties. It is what you fall back on if something goes wrong, and it is absolutely necessary. But it is not what defines the relationship on a day-to-day basis, and Trevor sees too many tenants walk into that relationship with the landlord cast as the adversary before a single conversation has taken place.
A good landlord-tenant relationship is a genuine partnership. The landlord wants to collect rent. The tenant wants to flourish in the space. Those interests are aligned, not in conflict. Trevor's approach is to make sure his tenants meet their landlords face to face before anything is signed. Shake hands. Have a real conversation. Establish the relationship as what it should be from the start.
The health of that relationship also extends to the other tenants in the building. Trevor shared a cautionary story about a landlord who leased space to a CrossFit-style gym to fill a vacancy, disrupting an otherwise professional office environment and damaging the relationships he had built with his existing tenants. The tenant mix matters. The energy of a space matters. And what might look like a short-term win can have long-term costs that far outweigh it.
Trevor has been doing this work in Livingston County for over a decade, and the thread running through all five of these principles is the same: take the time to plan, ask the right questions, and do not let urgency or assumptions drive the decision. The right space, found the right way, sets your business up to grow. The wrong one, even if it felt like the easy choice, can quietly hold you back for years.
To connect with Trevor Brooks and the Lorex Real Estate team, visit their office at the Second Street office building in downtown Brighton or call 517-548-9700.
To reach PCIA, visit pciaonline.com or call 800-969-4041.