What is the usual agent commission for sizable commercial real estate deals over dollar 10 million?

Answer 1

The answer is that it depends. Traditional commission rates are 5%-6% of the sales price. That being said, once you go above $5M or so, things become negotiable and are most often a fixed amount. So if you're talking a $10M sale in nowhersville, ND, the agent will probably take home about $250k as a negotiated amount. In L.A., it could be closer to $500k since $10M + sales occur more often.

But that is just sales.

On leases, the typical commission is 5% for the first five years and 2.5% for the second five years (if the lease is that long). For example, someone I know just did a 180,000 square foot office lease for $30/SF and ten years. This is extremely rare by the way to have a deal of this size. If you take the 180k SF and multiply it by $30, you get a total rent amount of $5.4M for the first year. Assuming rents didn't increase year to year, the resulting total value of the lease is $54M. If the agent is supposed to get 5% of the total deal value for the first five years and 2.5% of the total value the second five years, their commission would be $2,025,000! Do you think that is what they got? Probably not. My guess is the negotiated total commission was in the neighborhood of $500k for each side.

Keep in mind that all these percentages and dollar amounts represent what the total commission is, not the commission that each agent gets. All of the numbers discussed are most often split in half with one half going to the broker who represented the landlord and the other half going to the broker representing the tenant.

Furthermore, when you're talking sales over $10M, a large portion of those deals are not even done on the open market. Various pension funds, private investors, REITs, etc. will buy and sell properties between themselves without agents even being involved. Those organizations have real estate departments that may include current or former agents, but they would not typically receive the same commissions that an agent would get on the open market.