Office

Office space in the Jackson metro

The metro’s office market is two markets. Highland Colony Parkway and the Renaissance corridor in Ridgeland and Madison are tight, newer, and priced accordingly. Downtown Jackson has space, character and parking questions. Which one you belong in is usually decided by where your staff live, not by rent.

Tell us the requirement Run the numbers

On the market now

Office listings in the Bedford MLS mirror

Live from the Mississippi MLS. Commercial records here are thin by nature — the national marketplaces below carry the rest.

Nothing on the market right now

No office records match in the MLS mirror today. That is normal for this asset class in Mississippi; most of it moves privately or on the national marketplaces.

Call 601-707-6535 Open this search anyway Have us watch for it

Full-service, modified gross and NNN are not comparable rents

A $22 full-service rate and an $18 NNN rate are not $4 apart. Under a triple-net lease you pay your pro-rata share of taxes, insurance and common-area maintenance on top of base rent, and in this market that load commonly runs $5 to $8 a square foot. Ask for the operating-expense history for the last three years before you compare two buildings.

Modified gross sits between the two and means whatever the lease says it means. Read the expense-stop language. A stop set at the current year with an uncapped pass-through is a variable-rate obligation with your name on it.

Rentable versus usable, and the load factor nobody mentions

You pay rent on rentable square feet — your suite plus a share of lobbies, corridors and restrooms. The ratio between the two is the load factor, and it runs from about 8% in a single-tenant building to over 20% in a multi-tenant floor plate. A 3,000-square-foot suite with a 20% load costs the same as a 3,600-square-foot suite with none.

Ask for a BOMA measurement, not a number from a brochure. On a five-year lease a mis-stated load factor is a five-figure error.

Parking is the constraint in Jackson, not square footage

Suburban Ridgeland and Flowood product typically delivers four to five spaces per thousand square feet. Downtown Jackson often delivers one or two, with the rest in a deck at a monthly rate per space that never appears in the quoted rent. If you have thirty employees, price their parking before you price the suite.

Diligence

Before you sign an office lease

Bedford works this list on every office transaction. Ask any broker for their version — if there is not one, that is your answer.

Three years of operating-expense history, and the base year the stop is set against
BOMA-measured rentable and usable square feet, with the load factor stated
Parking count, location and monthly cost per space, in writing
Tenant-improvement allowance, who holds the contract, and what happens to unused allowance
HVAC responsibility above and below a dollar threshold, and the age of the units
Assignment and sublease rights — the clause that matters if you outgrow or shrink
Holdover rate, commonly 150% to 200% of the last month’s rent

National inventory

Office on LoopNet and Crexi

Built for Ridgeland below. Use the national search to switch to Madison, Jackson, Flowood, Brandon, Gulfport, Biloxi.

For sale

For lease

Price the insurance before you price the deal

Mississippi commercial property insurance has repriced sharply, and on the coast wind and flood are placed separately from everything else. Continental Brokers will quote the real building, not the seller’s expiring policy.

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What Mississippi actually requires

Insurance products are offered and placed by Continental Brokers Inc., an independent insurance agency. Bedford Realty, LLC is not an insurance agency, does not sell insurance, and receives no commission on policies placed. Coverage is subject to underwriting approval, policy terms, conditions and exclusions.

FAQ

Office: what people ask

What does office space rent for in Ridgeland and Madison?

Rates move, and quoting a number that is wrong six months from now helps nobody. Bedford will pull current comparable leases — including concessions, which are where the real rate hides — for your specific requirement. Ask for the comparables, not the average.

Should I lease or buy a small office building?

Owner-occupied purchases under roughly $5 million often work well in this market, particularly with an SBA 504 structure at 10% down. The test is how long you will be there and how specific the build-out is to you. Under five years, lease. Over ten with generic space needs, run both numbers — the cap-rate calculator on our investment page will do the arithmetic.

Who pays my broker if I am the tenant?

In nearly every office lease in this market, the landlord pays both sides of the commission out of the same budget whether or not you bring representation. If you negotiate alone, that money does not come back to you as rent relief.

Next step

Start with the requirement

Tell us what the business has to do and by when. We will work backwards to the building, search the MLS and the national marketplaces together, and represent you on whichever one wins.

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