Footfall data for lease negotiations

Why does turnover rent stop telling the whole story?

Turnover rent ties the lease to the till, which seemed fair for a long time. As more buying moves online, though, many units work as a showroom for the tenant’s brand: people visit, try and compare, then buy later through another channel. None of that shows in the unit’s turnover, so the turnover figure no longer tells the whole story.

So tenant and landlord end up arguing from numbers that measure different things. The landlord points at a location full of traffic, the tenant at a till quieter than the rent implies.

What makes footfall data a number both sides can accept?

It measures the location itself, independently of either side’s estimate. Bumbee Labs counts passers-by outside a unit, the share who enter (the capture rate), visits and dwell, consistently over time and anonymously throughout. Manual control measurements calibrate the statistical method, and academia, partners and customers have validated it.

Anonymity is important when organisations share data as part of a negotiation. The same numbers arrive through dashboards, scheduled reports or an API, so each party can read them in its own systems. The full metric catalogue lists everything that can sit behind a lease discussion.

Bumbee Labs is the company behind the only footfall method in Europe approved by a data protection authority.

What do landlords do with footfall data?

• Footfall-based terms. Visit counts per location let a landlord move from sales-based to footfall-based rents.
• Tenant mix and placement. Visits per location and the flows between zones separate true anchors from dead zones, so each tenant sits where the traffic suits them, with numbers to back the placement.
• Tenant reporting. The same data can be offered to tenants as a value-added intelligence feed, so both sides read one dashboard on a contested topic.
• Portfolio comparisons. Counting each building with the same metrics, season by season, makes asset performance comparable and quantifies what a refurbishment changed.

How operators use the data is covered on mall operators & property owners, and the estate-wide version on property companies.

What can a landlord show a prospective tenant before the lease is signed?

The measured traffic outside the unit itself: how many people pass, how many of them enter and how many visit, counted the same way over time. Shown to a prospective tenant before it signs, those counts give the landlord one figure for the pitch, measured on the stretch where the unit sits.

How can a tenant use footfall data in a renewal or a rent review?

A tenant can move the conversation from “your sales were down” to what the location delivered. If visits held up while purchases shifted online, that is the showroom argument with evidence behind it.

Capture rate adds a second layer: entries measured against the passers-by outside show how a unit did with the street it had, so landlord and tenant can discuss the location’s pull and the concept’s performance as two separate questions. Where the landlord already measures with Bumbee Labs, tenants can be offered their own feed of the same data, so both sides read from one page.

How did a Stockholm mall move its rents onto footfall?

A flagship Stockholm mall, one of Sweden’s busiest shopping areas, moved its rent model onto measured visits and later rolled the approach out across its other malls. The case is told in Stockholm Mall Sets Rents on Footfall.