Report: Tenant analysis and tenant search
The tenant analysis will become part of Placepoint Fusion. The report itself is not finished, but everything it builds on is available today: the companies in the area, the industry profile, growth, the accounts and the building stock. This page turns the search from property to company.
The report is coming, the data is already here
The report gathers the companies in an area you choose, grouped by industry, size and financial strength, and points to who is relevant for the premises you have vacant. Until it is ready, you do the round below yourself, tab by tab and map layer by map layer, or you let Placepoint AI put it together. It is the same data in all three cases; the difference is who writes the document.
The distinction between register and contract runs right through the hunt for a new tenant. Who is registered at an address, how long they have been there, what they do, how many employees they have, what they filed in their most recent annual accounts and which addresses they have had before, is public. This is what the report builds on. When a lease expires, what the company pays today, and whether someone in management has started looking for something bigger, is not in any register and will not be. That is why a tenant search never becomes a lookup, but a ranking: the registers tell you who is worth a phone call, not who says yes.
See also: Find the right tenant on placepoint.no.
A tenant search looks for needs that are about to change
The most common mistake in a tenant search is to look for companies that resemble the ones you already have. A profile is useful for knowing what the premises are suited to, but it finds no new tenants: the companies that fit the profile already sit somewhere, and most of them stay put. What creates a tenant is an event. Four of them cover almost everything:
- Growth. The company has more employees than the premises can take. This is the one event the registers see clearly, because employee numbers are reported and change year by year.
- A move. The company has just changed address, or has changed several times. The register sees the move, but only after it has happened. The pattern is still a signal: a company that has moved three times in ten years will move again.
- A merger or an acquisition. Two companies are to sit in the same place, or a group wants to bring businesses together. The registers see this indirectly, through group structure, roles and addresses across the companies in the chain.
- A contract that expires. The most important of the four, and the only one no register knows. The expiry date is in the contract between the company and the current landlord, and it is not public.
The consequence for the work is simple enough: the first three tracks rank the list, and the fourth is the conversation. Your relocation risk is someone else's opportunity, and the other way round.
Who this is for
Landlords and property managers with space to fill, commercial agents on letting assignments, and asset managers who need to know which industries the portfolio is already heavy in before they take in one more. Shopping centre management looking for the next anchor tenant, and expansion managers in a chain working the other way, looking for premises. The last group reads the same list backwards, and that is one of the reasons the analysis is worth running before you contact anyone.
The data is the same wherever in the country the area lies: 1.1 million active companies, 850,000 sub-entities, 300,000 address changes and nearly two million changes to company information a year. See Placepoint in numbers for the full overview.
The checklist
| Track | What you are looking for | Where in Placepoint |
|---|---|---|
| The area | Which industries dominate, and how densely business sits | Main Industry per Basic Statistical Unit, Retail activity |
| Companies on the move | Growth in employees, and who has recently changed address | Growing companies, the Financials and Offices tabs in the company panel |
| Financial strength and counterparty | Revenue, EBITDA, equity, the employee trend, the group behind | The company panel's Financials and Ownership tabs |
| Where the premises are | Commercial buildings, usable floor area per housing unit, who sits there now | Commercial buildings, the Property and Tenants tabs in the property panel |
| Chains and branches | Outlets per chain, with revenue and chain affiliation | Grocery Chains, Department stores, Shopping centres |
| Building the list | A selection on industry, employees and accounts, and a spreadsheet out | Filter, Search, Tags, Datasets |
The map layers are switched on from Map layer in the left-hand menu. See How to use map layers if you have not done it before.
Who is located in the area
The first question is what kind of business already exists where you have commercial property to fill. The Business category in the map layer catalogue gathers the layers that answer that, and Main Industry per Basic Statistical Unit carries the most weight. The layer shows the five dominant industries per grunnkrets (SSB's basic statistical unit) by NACE, ranked on number of employees, and colours each unit by the top one. The image at the top of the page is inner Oslo: continuous fields of food and drink service along Grünerløkka, public administration around Regjeringskvartalet, retail along the city centre axis.
An industry profile is read from two things at once. The colour says what the area is, and the transitions say where it stops being that. A grunnkrets with office-based services next to a belt of warehousing and transport is a boundary, and premises on the wrong side of such a boundary are harder to fill than the address alone suggests. The layer's filter narrows on NACE (level 1), Number of businesses per industry and Number of employees per industry, so you can let the map show only the industry you are looking for.
| Map layer | Answers |
|---|---|
| Main Industry per Basic Statistical Unit | The five dominant industries per grunnkrets, by NACE and number of employees |
| Retail activity | Where the retail trade in the municipality actually sits, graded within the municipality |
| Ownership and Company Structure | Who owns the neighbouring buildings, coloured by the industry of the ultimate owner |
| Daytime population | How many people are actually in the area on a working day |
| Real Estate Transactions in the Media | What has been reported bought and sold nearby |
For a landlord, Retail activity is the layer that comes closest to footfall. It grades areas within the municipality from lowest to highest, and often correlates well with where people actually walk. A shop unit in a field with low retail activity needs a different tenant than one in a field with high activity, and that is a conversation you would rather have before you advertise.
Main Industry per Basic Statistical Unit counts employees at the registered address, not where people physically work. A grunnkrets with one large head office gets the whole group's employees placed there, including those who sit in other cities.
Companies on the move
The next question is who is changing. Growing companies is the layer built for exactly this: it shows companies that have grown by at least ten employees or 25% at the same address over 18 months, and leaves out public-sector company forms and the smallest changes. The circle is graded by growth in per cent, the colour by how long ago the address was changed, and the filter narrows on Employees and Growth in %.
A company that has added 40 employees in 18 months at an address it has had for several years has a space problem it has not yet solved. That is the most precise tenant candidate the registers can give you. Click the circle, and the company panel opens with the rest: what the company does, who owns it, and what the accounts say.
Growth is read in detail in the Financials tab. The Employees sub-tab gives the trend year by year, and that is the figure that translates directly into floor area: a rule of thumb for offices is 10 to 15 m² per employee, so 40 new employees is in the order of 400 to 600 m² the company did not have before. The Accounts card above shows revenue and EBIT per financial year, as bars or a curve, and Select values controls which series the graph draws.
The other half of the movement sits in the Offices tab. It lists the business and office addresses linked to the company, with the Office breakdown card at the top and three sub-tabs: Offices, Offices tree and Move history. Move history is the address history, that is the trace a move actually leaves, with previously registered addresses and dates. A company that has changed address three times in ten years behaves differently from one that has sat still since incorporation, and Offices tree shows whether the company has several locations it could merge. For a property company with many subsidiaries, the tab is also the fastest route to the structure.
An address change in the register is a formal registration and not necessarily a physical move. A company that puts its business address with its accountant looks like a move without having moved, and conversely a company may have moved without having reported it yet.
Financial strength and counterparty
Once the candidate is found, the question turns around: can the company carry the contract you want to offer. This is the same credit assessment a property owner makes on sitting tenants, only done before the agreement instead of after. The Financials tab in the company panel gives the accounts year by year, with Select values to switch which series the graph shows: Revenue, EBITDA, EBIT, EBT, Net income, Total assets, Equity and debt. Below the graph are the key figures for the most recent year with the change from the year before, and the Annual report sub-tab links to the filed annual accounts.
Five things usually decide the matter for a landlord:
- Equity says whether the company can take one bad year without defaulting.
- The result over several years separates a company in a cyclical downturn from one that is on its way out.
- The employee trend says whether the space requirement points up or down, and thereby whether the contract should include options to expand.
- The age of the company says something about how much history there is to assess at all. A company incorporated last year has none.
- The group above decides who you are really negotiating with. The Ownership tab shows beneficial owners, the shareholders per financial year, the ownership tree upwards and the group structure with parent, subsidiary and sister companies.
The last point is what often makes the deal possible. A subsidiary with a thin balance sheet and a solid parent company above it is a completely different counterparty, provided the parent provides a rent guarantee. The Ownership tab tells you who to ask for it. The Roles tab next to it gives the board, managing director, signature authority and power of procuration from Brønnøysundregistrene (BRREG), and thereby who can actually sign.
The accounting figures are filed annual accounts and lag in time. A company that ran into trouble in the current year still looks healthy in the most recent filed accounts, and the ownership chain may stop at a foreign company where Brønnøysundregistrene lacks in-depth data.
Where the premises are
A tenant search ultimately runs both ways: you have space and are looking for companies, but you also need to know what kind of space exists around you, because that is your competition. Commercial buildings draws all building types that can be linked to commercial use in Matrikkelen, split into office, industry, retail, warehousing and logistics, and food and accommodation. The layer draws both points and polygons, so you see where the category sits and how large the footprint is.
From the map to the individual property, the route goes through the property panel. Usage units under the Property tab lists the housing units registered on the property, each with unit number, floor and purpose of use, and with UFA per housing unit in the full view. That figure decides which companies can fit at all, and lets you match a space requirement you have calculated from the employee count against something concrete. The Tenants tab next to it says who sits there today, and the Historic tenants sub-tab who has moved out.
| Map layer | Answers |
|---|---|
| Commercial buildings | The building stock that can be used for commercial purposes, split into five categories |
| Building age | How old the stock is, and thereby what standard the premises have |
| Developer activity | Which new space is on its way into the market nearby |
| Enova Energy Labelling | The energy rating a tenant with its own reporting requirements asks about |
| Shopping centres | The centres in the area by revenue, with the number of shops and sales floor area |
There is no map layer of vacant premises, and no public source for vacancy per building. Matrikkelen records what has been built and how it is divided, not what stands empty. An empty housing unit and a let housing unit look the same in the register, and you have to find the difference yourself, in the Tenants tab or by phoning.
Chains and branches
A chain is not one company in the register. Each outlet is usually registered with its own organisation number, as a sub-entity under a head office, and that is why a name search on the chain gives you the head office and not the shop on the street. That is the most common dead end when you are looking for tenants for a shop unit, and it is worth knowing before you start: chains are found by location, not by name.
The approach is therefore the opposite of the one for office tenants. Instead of searching for a company, you switch on the chain layers and read off who is already established where. Grocery Chains shows every grocery shop in Norway, each with name, address, revenue, net result and chain affiliation, and the filter narrows on Date of establishment, Umbrella chain, Chain and Services offered. The other industry layers are built the same way, with industry, chain affiliation, revenue, number of employees and net result per outlet.
| Map layer | Answers |
|---|---|
| Grocery Chains | Every grocery shop with chain, umbrella chain, revenue and net result |
| Grocery chains – heat map | Where coverage is high or low, as a density map |
| Department stores, Building materials stores, Furniture stores | Large outlets with industry, chain and revenue |
| Fast food restaurants, Hotels | Food service and accommodation with chain affiliation and operating profit |
| Fitness centre, Pharmacies, Fuel stations | The chains that follow population and traffic rather than the office market |
The analysis this gives you is the white-spot analysis: which chains are present in the neighbouring municipalities but not in yours, and which have established themselves densely elsewhere with the same customer base. A chain missing from a field where all the competitors are represented has either assessed the area and said no, or not assessed it yet. Both are worth knowing before you make contact, and both are faster to read off the map than from a company search.
The chain data comes from commercial registers updated weekly, not public registers. An outlet that has just opened or closed may be missing, and the revenue figure is the last reported figure for the unit, not the current year.
Building the list
So far the analysis is visual. To turn it into a working list, Filter is the tool. The panel has two filter types, and it is the second one you want: Company searches Norwegian companies on name, organisation number, industry, address, accounts and group structure. The sections are Company, Location, Accounts, Conglomerate And Owners, Property Portfolio (As Landlord), Premises (As Tenant) and Roles And Board.
The combination that produces a tenant list is usually the same: industry from Company, the number of employees and a range on revenue or equity from Accounts, and a geographic extent from Location or Follow map extent. Premises (As Tenant) adds the other side of the same question, that is where the company rents today. Show in table opens the hits as a table at the bottom of the screen, and Export downloads them as a spreadsheet. The export takes up to 10,000 rows, so a wide search must be narrowed before it can be pulled out.
The other surfaces take over where Filter stops:
- Search takes address, matrikkelnummer, company name and organisation number in the same field, and is the fastest way in when you already have a name. Select Companies in the left-hand column, or search on the organisation number, and the hit is unambiguous.
- Tags keeps the list between sessions. Add tag links a property to a named list, and the panel gathers them as a map and a table.
- Datasets goes the other way: upload your candidate list or your CRM extract, match the rows against matrikkelen on address, and see which ones did not match. Then your own leads sit on the map next to the layers above.
- Projects is where the datasets and the sharing with colleagues belong, when the list is to be worked by several people.
A company's registered business address is not necessarily where the business operates. A company may have its business address with its accountant and operations somewhere else entirely, and a sub-entity may lack its own address. Cross-check the top candidates before the list goes out to anyone.
The report itself
The format is a ranked candidate list with an area description in front, not a listing of every company in an area. The summary answers how many realistic candidates the area contains and which industries they fall into. Then comes the industry profile, then the candidates, then the reasoning per candidate.
| Part | Content |
|---|---|
| Summary | The number of candidates, the split by industry and size, and the five that should be contacted first |
| Industry profile | Dominant industries per grunnkrets in the area, with the number of businesses and employees, and a comparison against the neighbouring units |
| Candidate list | Company, organisation number, industry, employees, current address and estimated space requirement |
| Movement | Growth in employees over the past 18 months, address history and mergers or acquisitions in the chain |
| Financial strength | Revenue, EBITDA, net income and equity per candidate, with the group and a possible guarantor |
| Chains | Outlets per chain in the area and in the neighbouring municipalities, with the white spots marked |
| The premises | Commercial buildings in the area with usable floor area per housing unit, and current tenants where they exist |
| Not investigated | Contract expiry dates, current rent levels, vacant space per building, and any stated relocation plan |
The last row is the scope limitation, and it always belongs. The report says who is worth calling and why; whether they will move, they say themselves. The appendix gives the source and date per item with a link back to the tab or map layer it came from, so every row can be traced.
Create the report today with Placepoint AI
Placepoint AI has access to the same sources as the tabs and map layers above, and writes the document from a single prompt. The example with a lead list built on year of construction, building type and owning company is on Examples and tips, together with short prompts such as "Create a list of IT companies in Bergen with more than 20 employees that sit in office buildings". The prompt does not need to be longer than this:
Create a tenant analysis for [area, address or municipality]. First describe
the industry profile in the area with the dominant industries per grunnkrets.
Then find companies that are relevant for [number] m² of [office/warehouse/
shop]: include industry, number of employees, growth in employees over the
past two years, current address and address history, and the most recent
accounts with revenue, equity and net result. Rank the candidates by how
likely it is that the space requirement has changed. Include chains that are
established in the neighbouring municipalities but not here. Clearly mark
what the registers do not cover.
If the answer is going into your own template, ask for a table instead of a PDF, one row per candidate: company, organisation number, industry, employees, growth, current address, equity and reasoning. The default instruction for commercial agents and property managers on the same page prioritises floor area figures with a source and tenants with industry and term, which is the same order the report follows.
If you are in the map, the Agent does the short lookup without switching tools: "Which companies are located in this block, and how many employees do they have?" gives the list as text, with links onwards to each company. The map moves to where the hits are.
Related surfaces
- Map layer: Business - all the layers the analysis uses, individually.
- Company panel - financials, ownership, roles and address history for one candidate.
- Property panel - the property you have vacant, tab by tab.
- Units and Tenants - the full field description for area per housing unit and for the tenant list.
- Filter - the selection on industry, employees, accounts and rented premises.
- Find the right tenant - the same recipe walked through on one property.
- Tenants and business (FAQ) - where the company and tenant data comes from, and what is missing.
- Report: Tenants - the opposite direction: the tenants you already have, read as counterparty risk.
- Report: Market and area analysis - the area described more broadly, with demographics and travel time.
- Report: Acquisition and prospecting - the same list logic, but on properties rather than companies.
Data sources
- Brønnøysundregistrene (BRREG) (companies, sub-entities, industry, roles, accounts and registered business addresses).
- Skatteetaten (number of employees, shareholder data and beneficial owners).
- Matrikkelen via Kartverket (commercial buildings, housing units and floor area).
- Geodata AS (the chain and industry registers behind the shop, department store and centre layers).
- Placepoint (Main Industry per Basic Statistical Unit, Growing companies, Retail activity and Ownership and Company Structure).
- Statistisk sentralbyrå (SSB) (grunnkretser and daytime population).