What does the legalization of marijuana have to do with a commercial real estate glossary? Just ask the State of Colorado!
A glossary of terms seemed to make sense as a follow up to Property Virgins–Commercial Real Estate Version. Familiarity with the lingo makes navigating a search for commercial property far more effective and a lot less hazardous, particularly in commercial leasing.
A good glossary should be a living document. It’s fascinating to watch the English language morph in response to societal zeitgeist.
Take for example the swelling social pressure to legalize marijuana. Pot, ganja, weed, toke, blunt–there are numerous slang terms for marijuana. But I recently read a new one directly related to the cultural shift of legalizing pot: trimmigrants.
The graphic to the left is a screenshot of a definition of the word on Urban Dictionary.
Quick, before you click on Urban Dictionary–teenagers write many of the definitions, so if you click on the link prepare to be extremely offended and/or mildly amused.
(Teens of course are fluent in slang, but since Al Gore handed them the internet they are practically reinventing the English language. Urban Dictionary has posted 7,500,000 new English slang words in just 15 years, receiving an average 2,000 new submissions every day. Compare this to the 20-volume edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which currently lists about 175,000 words. Urban Dictionary is an etymologist’s dream. And every parent’s friend, as it makes an EXCELLENT resource for decoding teen text messages. Have fun dropping those terms around the house and ruining them forever for your teen.)
Fun fact: since Colorado legalized marijuana use, premium warehouse spaces are leasing at as much as $1,000 per square foot! For those of you who don’t shop regularly for warehouse space, that’s about $993 per square foot MORE than a warehouse in Frederick typically leases for.
But what does any of this have to do with a commercial real estate glossary? Bear with me…
Every industry regardless of size has its own set of ever-morphing colloquialisms and acronyms, and commercial real estate is no different. A new business owner seeking commercial space should know the difference between a NNN lease and a modified gross lease. A gymnastics school or auto repair shop searching for new space needs a clear-span warehouse.
And a marijuana distribution facility needs…well I don’t know much about the warehouse spaces coveted by hemp harvesters…but if Maryland goes the way of Colorado, no doubt a commercial cannabis cottage industry will spring up overnight. And with it, a whole new vocabulary weaving into Frederick’s CRE lexicon.
High bay, core factor, CAM, flex space, sandwich lease, sunk costs, TI–all of these terms and more are defined in MacRo’s Commercial Real Field Guide, handily downloadable here.
And rest assured…at MacRo, we won’t let the grass grow under our feet…the MacRo Field Guide will be frequently updated to reflect any tectonic cultural shifts that color the language of Frederick’s commercial real estate world.
‘Cause we got your back, bae.
The author: Kathy Krach is a commercial sales and leasing agent with MacRo, when she is not otherwise occupied trying to figure out what her teens are saying on multiple social media platforms.