How to Find Commercial Space in Sacramento (From Two Brokers Who’ve Done It 1,000 Times)

By Chase Burke and Andy Jonsson, Co-Founders of ROME Real Estate Group

Between us, we’ve helped Sacramento businesses lease over a thousand commercial spaces — retail, office, industrial, restaurants, medical, fitness, you name it. Most of those tenants did one of two things before they called us: they spent six months browsing LoopNet and gave up, or they signed a lease that cost them way more than it should have. This guide is what we’d tell a friend who walked into our office and asked, “I need to find space in Sacramento — where do I start?”

Step 1: Get clear on what you actually need (not what you think you need)

This is where most tenants get stuck. They walk in saying “I need 2,500 square feet” and after twenty minutes of conversation we figure out they really need 1,800. Or they say “I want Midtown” and three weeks later we’re showing them East Sac because the rent is half and their customers don’t care which side of B Street they’re on.

Before you start looking, write down:

• Your actual square footage need. Most retail and office tenants overshoot. Run the math on what you need today plus reasonable growth — not a five-year aspiration.
• Your customer. Who are they, where do they live, and where do they already shop? That tells you submarket faster than any demographic report.
• Your budget — including NNN. A two-dollar base rent with two-fifty NNN is not cheaper than three-fifty gross. Most Sacramento retail and industrial leases are NNN, so the all-in number is what matters. (We wrote a full guide on NNN leases if this is new to you.)
• Your timeline. Six to twelve months out is normal. If you need space in thirty days, your options collapse fast and your leverage drops with them.
• Your dealbreakers. Drive-thru, signage visibility, parking ratio, ADA, grease trap, three-phase power, dock-high doors. Decide which are non-negotiable before you tour anything.

Step 2: Understand the Sacramento submarkets

Sacramento is not one market. It’s about a dozen submarkets that price differently, vacate differently, and serve different customer bases. The submarkets we work in most:

• Downtown / Midtown. Premium retail and office rents, walkable, dense, high-visibility — but tight parking and the highest-priced submarket per square foot.
• East Sacramento / Land Park. Established neighborhoods, loyal local clientele, smaller footprints, strong for service retail, restaurants, and medical.
• Natomas. Newer construction, family-driven retail, larger footprints, good drive-by visibility along I-5 and I-80.
• Roseville. Highest household income in the metro, dominant for big-box retail, regional office, and credit-tenant NNN. Roseville rent commands a premium for a reason.
• Folsom. Affluent residential, limited retail vacancy, strong for medical, fitness, and specialty retail.
• Elk Grove. Fastest-growing residential submarket, hungry for retail and service businesses.
• Rancho Cordova / Highway 50 Corridor. Office and industrial workhorse, accessible from the Bay, lower per-square-foot than the urban core.

Picking the wrong submarket is the most expensive mistake a Sacramento tenant can make. We’ve seen retailers sign in Roseville for double the rent of an equivalent Elk Grove location — and watched their margins crash. We’ve also seen restaurants try to save fifty cents per square foot by going east when their target customer was downtown. Submarket matters more than rent.

Step 3: Decide how you’re going to look for space

You have three options:

1. Browse listings sites yourself. LoopNet, Crexi, CoStar (if you can get access). Reality: maybe forty percent of Sacramento commercial space is actually listed online. The rest is off-market — landlords hold space, deals get signed before listings go up, and listings sites lag the market by weeks.
2. Call landlords or listing brokers directly. Faster than online, but the listing broker works for the landlord. They are not on your side of the table. They will not bring you the off-market property down the street that’s a better deal — that’s not their job.
3. Hire a tenant rep broker. Someone whose job is to represent you, not the landlord. They survey the entire market — listed and off-market — negotiate the LOI, and pull apart the lease before you sign. The cost? It’s paid by the landlord out of the listing commission. Bringing your own broker does not increase your rent.

That last point trips people up, so we’ll say it again: a tenant rep does not cost you anything. The commission is paid by the landlord and split with the listing broker — same as residential. The only thing that changes when you bring your own broker is that someone is finally on your side.

Step 4: Learn how to read a Sacramento commercial listing

A quick translation guide for the numbers you’ll see:

• Base rent. What you pay for the space itself, usually quoted as dollars per square foot per year, sometimes per month. A “$24/SF” listing for 2,000 SF means $48,000 per year, or $4,000 per month.
• NNN (triple net). Your share of property taxes, insurance, and common area maintenance. Quoted separately, also per square foot per year. NNN is on top of base rent, not included.
• Gross or full-service. The opposite of NNN. The landlord covers operating costs and bills you a single rent number. More common in office than retail or industrial.
• TI / Tenant Improvement Allowance. Money the landlord contributes toward your build-out. Usually quoted per square foot. A $40/SF TI on a 2,000 SF space is $80,000 toward your construction.
• Free rent. Months of zero rent at lease start. Standard for build-outs and seasonal businesses.
• CAM. Common Area Maintenance — the landlord’s costs to maintain shared spaces (parking lot, landscaping, lighting). Bundled into NNN charges.

The number that matters is the all-in: base + NNN + utilities + your operating costs. Always run that math before you fall in love with a space.

Step 5: How to actually tour a property

Here’s what we look at when we tour space with a client:

• The neighbors. Who’s next door? Are they driving traffic or repelling it? Is there a co-tenancy clause that protects you if anchor tenants leave?
• Parking ratio and condition. Sacramento parking codes vary by submarket. Confirm code compliance for your use, not just the listing’s stated count.
• Signage rights. Pylon, monument, building, window — what are you actually entitled to? This is in the lease, not on the brochure.
• Build-out condition. “As-is,” “warm shell,” “vanilla shell,” and “turn-key” all mean wildly different things. Get specific on what’s there and what isn’t.
• Mechanical and utilities. Age and condition of HVAC, electrical capacity (especially for restaurants and industrial), plumbing, and ADA compliance.
• Visibility and ingress. Where will customers actually see you from? Where will they enter? Is the dominant traffic flow with you or against you?

One thing we tell every client: visit the space at the time of day your business operates. A retail space tourable on Tuesday at 2 p.m. tells you nothing about what Friday at 6 p.m. looks like. Drive by in the rain. Drive by on a Saturday morning. Talk to neighboring tenants if you can.

Step 6: The LOI and lease — where the real money is made

Once you’ve found a space, the deal moves to the Letter of Intent. This is non-binding but it’s where ninety percent of the negotiation actually happens. Once the LOI is signed, you and the landlord move to lease drafting, and lease terms generally track the LOI.

Things to negotiate in the LOI that tenants routinely miss:

• Tenant Improvement allowance. Landlords almost always have more to give than they offer. Negotiate hard.
• Free rent. Especially for build-outs and during seasonal opening months.
• Renewal options. Two five-year options at fair market rent (with a cap) is standard. Don’t sign without options.
• Annual rent escalations. Fixed percentage versus CPI versus appraisal — these affect your year-five rent significantly.
• CAM caps. Cap controllable CAM increases at four percent per year so you’re not exposed to runaway property expenses.
• Exclusivity. If you’re a coffee shop, prevent the landlord from leasing to another coffee shop in the center.
• Co-tenancy. If a key anchor leaves, you should have rent reduction or termination rights.
• Assignment and sublease rights. What happens if you sell your business or need to relocate? Don’t sign without reasonable assignment rights.

Step 7: The Sacramento mistakes we see most often

1. Signing without understanding NNN. Tenants budget for base rent and get surprised by their first NNN reconciliation. Always model the all-in cost.
2. Picking the wrong submarket to save fifty cents. Submarket selection drives revenue. Saving rent in the wrong submarket usually costs more in lost sales.
3. No renewal options. Year five rolls around, the market has moved, and the landlord can put you on whatever rent they want. Always negotiate options.
4. Not auditing CAM. Landlord CAM reconciliations contain mistakes. Audit them annually.
5. Going direct on a complicated build-out. Self-representing is fine on a simple deal. On anything with TI, exclusives, or co-tenancy, the deal economics get away from you fast without a tenant rep.
6. Falling in love with a space too early. The landlord can read this on you. Negotiate like you have three other options, even if you only have one.

When to call us

If you’re early in the process and just want to talk through what’s possible, call us. We do free consultations because the worst time to learn that you should have negotiated something differently is after the lease is signed.

If you have an LOI in hand from a landlord and haven’t signed yet, call us today. That’s the highest-leverage moment to bring in a tenant rep — there’s still room to negotiate, and our involvement doesn’t cost you anything.

If you’ve already signed and the deal is hurting, call us anyway. Renewals come up faster than you think, and lease audits often turn up money that’s been overcharged.

ROME Real Estate Group represents commercial tenants across the Greater Sacramento metro — Sacramento, Folsom, Roseville, Elk Grove, Rancho Cordova, and Natomas. Reach us at (916) 932-2199 or admin@romecre.com, or learn more about our Tenant Representation services.

Chase Burke and Andy Jonsson are the co-founders of ROME Real Estate Group. Chase has closed over 650 transactions totaling more than 1.7 million square feet. Andy brings a CPA background to commercial real estate, with deep expertise in deal underwriting and lease economics. Both are Sacramento natives.