Buying your own commercial premises

The wrong building will cost you more in inefficiency than you will ever save on the purchase price. Before we search, we take a proper brief on how the business actually runs.

Truck movements, clear span and internal height, three phase power and supply capacity, floor loading, staff and customer parking, roller door dimensions, cool room or clean room needs, hours of operation, and what the site has to accommodate in five years rather than today.

• Operational requirements written down and used as the filter
• Zoning and approved use checked against what you actually do
• Growth headroom assessed, not assumed
• Compliance, access and services verified before an offer is made

A common structure is the fund buying the premises and leasing it to the trading business at market rent. Rent stops leaving the business and starts building an asset you control.

There are strict rules around this. The property has to qualify as business real property, the lease must be on genuine commercial terms and documented properly, and borrowing inside the fund has its own requirements. We work alongside your accountant and adviser rather than in place of them, and we will tell you plainly when a property will not satisfy the test.

Ownership is not automatically the right call. Capital tied up in a building is capital not funding stock, equipment or hiring, and some businesses earn far more on that capital inside the operation.

We run the comparison honestly. Total occupancy cost against ownership cost including outgoings, land tax, interest, maintenance and the capital you would tie up. If leasing is the better answer for the next three years, we will say so.

Commercial contracts move faster and forgive less than residential. The problems that hurt owner occupiers are rarely the ones on the marketing brochure.

We work through the detail with your solicitor and consultants and price the risk into what we offer.

• Zoning, approved use and any development approval conditions
• Outgoings, land tax, body corporate and sinking fund position
• Contamination history, asbestos, fire compliance and essential services
• Structural condition, roof and slab, hardstand and drainage
• Existing leases, holdovers and make-good obligations where the site is partly tenanted
• GST treatment and going concern implications discussed with your accountant

Owner occupiers routinely overpay because the building is emotionally the right one and the agent knows it. We do the numbers before you get attached.

Every offer we put forward carries comparable evidence, a read on the vendor's position and timing, and terms structured around your finance, settlement and fit-out timeline. Where the building will not work operationally, we say so early rather than talking you into it.

Plenty of owners start with their own building and then keep going. Once you have held commercial property, the next industrial unit, medical suite or fuel and convenience site is a much more comfortable decision.

We work with owners across the whole path, from a first workshop to a small portfolio of tenanted assets held for income.