A commercial buyers agent is engaged by the buyer, only the buyer, to source, assess and negotiate income-producing property. The job is grading the lease and the tenant before the building, not after. It isn't the same skill a residential buyers agent applies to a bigger price tag; it's a distinct discipline, built around a different question. A residential purchase is mostly a bet on land and comparables. A commercial purchase is mostly a bet on income, and the income lives in a document, not a street.
What a commercial buyers agent actually does
The work covers the same acquisition process as residential, sourcing, assessment, negotiation, run to settlement, applied to a different asset with a different risk profile. What changes is the order of operations. A residential agent starts with the suburb and the pocket. A commercial agent starts with the lease: who the tenant is, how long they're committed for, what they've agreed to pay and when that rent steps up. The building still gets assessed, closely, but it gets assessed second, because a well-built property with a weak tenant is a worse asset than an average property with a strong one.
How commercial buying differs from residential
The two disciplines share a process shape and little else underneath it.
| Residential | Commercial | |
|---|---|---|
| What gets assessed first | Suburb and pocket-level data | Lease terms and tenant covenant strength |
| Typical deposit and lending | 80 to 90% LVR | 25 to 35% down |
| How yield is quoted | Gross | Net |
| Vacancy risk, if it happens | Typically weeks | Can run to months or longer |
The fuller version of this comparison, including how each asset class interacts with the post-2027 tax settings, is in commercial vs residential property investment.
The Deal Grade, and why the lease is graded before the building
Every deal I assess gets graded A1 to C3 through The Deal Grade™: a letter from A to C on the physical building, a number from 1 to 3 on the income. The building grade covers the usual physical factors, age, construction, clear height, access. The income grade is the one that decides whether the deal is worth pricing at all, and it comes from the lease, not the listing.
That means checking the tenant's covenant strength (who's actually on the hook to pay, and how strong is their business), the lease length and any fixed escalations, the weighted average lease expiry across the tenancy, and how outgoings are structured, whether rates, insurance and maintenance sit with the landlord or pass through to the tenant. A strong building on a weak, short, easily broken lease is a worse buy-zone deal than an average building on a long lease to a covenant that isn't going anywhere. Only deals that clear the income grade get priced.
What the fee buys on a commercial deal
The fee is $5,000 upfront, then 2% of the purchase price on success, payable at unconditional exchange, both inclusive of GST. If I don't secure the asset, the 2% never exists. It buys three things specific to commercial, on top of the general acquisition discipline described above.
The first is access. Off-market and pre-market stock moves through relationships with selling agents, the same sourcing discipline that applies in residential, run against a smaller and far less liquid pool of listings. The second is lease-first negotiation: pricing and terms argued from the income the asset actually produces, not the number on the flyer. The third is coordinating the due diligence a commercial deal genuinely needs, which is wider than a residential one: building condition, yes, but also the lease documents themselves, an outgoings reconciliation, and, where an SMSF is the buyer, the business real property test that now gates a fund's ability to borrow for a commercial purchase.
Who actually needs a commercial buyers agent
Practically, commercial suits investors with $300,000 or more in deployable capital once a realistic deposit, costs and a buffer are accounted for. Inside that group, a few profiles come up repeatedly: residential investors graduating from a growth strategy to an income strategy as the portfolio's job changes, business owners buying their own premises rather than continuing to pay rent to someone else, including through an SMSF, and investors who want vacancy and lease risk actively managed at the point of purchase rather than discovered after settlement, when there's nothing left to do about it.
How to evaluate a commercial buyers agent, including me
Five things worth asking. Who pays them, and is it only the buyer? Can they read a lease and explain WALE and outgoings allocation without reaching for notes? Do they have a documented, settled commercial purchase, not just residential volume with a commercial page bolted on (mine is the Dry Creek warehouse, on the results page with the full workings shown)? What percentage of their commercial searches end in no purchase, because a search that always ends in a purchase isn't screening anything? And what did The Deal Grade actually score on the last deal they walked away from, because the walk-aways tell you more about the discipline than the wins do.
The Commercial Ready Check is a two-minute self-assessment that scores the same factors I check with clients: capital, income, risk posture, timeframe. It's the honest starting point before any of the above questions matter.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a commercial buyers agent cost?
I charge $5,000 upfront, then 2% of the purchase price on success, payable at unconditional exchange, both inclusive of GST. Deal sizes in commercial vary too widely for a single flat fee to be honest, which is why the structure splits a funded search from a success-based percentage.
Is a commercial buyers agent worth it at the smaller end of the commercial range?
Entry-level stock like strata offices and shops exists below the $300,000 deployable-capital threshold that most quality commercial assets need, but tenant quality matters just as much there as on a larger asset, arguably more, since there's less room in the numbers to absorb a bad lease. Whether representation is worth it comes down to whether the buyer can read a lease and negotiate one confidently alone; most first-time commercial buyers can't yet, which is exactly the gap the job fills.
Do the 2027 tax changes affect commercial property the same way as residential?
No. The announced measures target residential investment property: from 1 July 2027, rental losses on established residential property purchased after 7:30pm on 12 May 2026 stop offsetting salary annually, and the 50% CGT discount is being replaced with CPI indexation. Commercial property's tax treatment is unchanged as drafted, partly because most commercial assets are cash flow positive from settlement rather than negatively geared in the first place. The measures remain announced, subject to the passage of legislation. The full comparison is in commercial vs residential property investment.
Can I buy commercial property through my SMSF?
Yes, and since 10 August 2026 it's the more open of the two paths: new residential LRBAs inside an SMSF have closed, while commercial LRBAs remain available if the purchase clears the business real property test and the fund's other compliance checks. The rules are set out in full in SMSF commercial property rules after the 2026 LRBA ban and the seven tests that decide whether your SMSF can buy property.
What's the difference between a commercial buyers agent and a commercial real estate agent?
Payment direction. A commercial buyers agent is paid by the buyer and accountable to the buyer. A commercial real estate agent is paid by the vendor, usually as a percentage of the sale price, and is legally working to get the vendor the best price and terms, whatever the sales conversation sounds like in the room. Both roles are legitimate; they're just not on the same side of the table.
