Best way to market a 550sf commercial space in Ledroit Park

[Manuel Diaz]

As the title suggests, I am a new landlord of a mixed-used multi-family building. The bottom unit is a commercial space that has been used as a tattoo shop in the past but is now vacant. I have tried to market the property on Craigslist and Facebook marketplace but I am not getting many inquiries. I have looked into Loopnet, but it seems like it's a service built for brokerages with a cost of about $80 per listing. Is this typical in the commercial space?

What other platforms should I use to market the property? Are commercial brokers the only way to work this market? With such a small space, it just seems a bit of a waste since rent is only about $2200 a month. 

[Russell Brazil]

Originally posted by @Manuel Diaz:

Originally posted by @Emily Howlett:

I would say get an agent. It's a difficult market to find tenants right now, and especially with it being commercial, you're going to want to have someone who has a client base to market to as well as the exposure to the MLS

What type of commission should I expect to pay? I thought that MLS was typically reserved for residential properties and that there was no centralized system for commercial spaces. Am I incorrect?

There is the commercial MLS in BrightMLS, and there is CoStar. Loopnet is owned by Costar and has a few front facing listings for the public to browse, but the majority of what they have is on Costar only for their members to see. Brights commercial section is also private only for members to see.

Small commercial spaces currently have very long vacancy times.