Commercial real estate is typically divided into six categories
Office Buildings
Includes single‐tenant properties, small professional office buildings, downtown high-rise, and everything in between.
Industrial
Ranges from smaller properties, often called “Flex” or “R&D” properties, to larger office service or office warehouse properties to the very large “big box” industrial properties. An important, defining characteristic of industrial space is Clear Height. Clear height is the actual height, to the bottom of the steel girders in the interior of the building. This might be 14‐16 feet for smaller properties, and 40+ feet for larger ones. What is also considered are the type and number of docks that the property has. These can be Grade Level, where the parking lot and the warehouse floor are on the same level, to semi‐dock height at 24 inches, the height of a pickup truck or delivery truck. Another consideration is a full‐dock at 48 inches which is semi‐truck height. There are buildings which have a Rail Spur for train cars for loading and unloading.
Retail/Restaurant
This category includes pad sites on highway frontages, single tenant retail buildings, small neighborhood shopping centers, larger centers with grocery store anchor tenants. This category also includes “power centers” with large anchor stores, regional and outlet malls.
Multifamily
This category overs apartment complexes or high‐rise apartment buildings. Generally, anything larger than a fourplex is considered commercial real estate.
Land
Included here are investment properties on undeveloped, raw, rural land in the path of future development. Infill land with an urban area, pad sites, and more may be included in this category.
Miscellaneous
This would include any other non-residential properties such as hotel, hospitality, medical, and self‐storage developments, along many more in this general category.
