While residential property prices may have bucked a year-long trend was falling during January, the opposite was true in the commercial property sector. This market enjoyed robust growth during the first four weeks of 2017, with capital values increasing by 0.3% and the price of rental venues edging up 0.1% during the same period.
While the commercial property market may currently be outperforming its residential rival, however, the process of selecting a location for your business can be far more complicated than picking up a private residence.
Despite this, there is still ample opportunity to get your hands on the perfect spot for your organisation, so long as you look in the right places and bear the right factors in mind. These include: –
Consider Location Carefully
It’s not just the building you need to suit your purposes—after all, a building can always be renovated—but the location. This plays into things in two ways.
First is the kind of area you will install yourself. This is especially important for retail businesses, which must draw in customers. They need to strike a balance between being visible to their target demographics, and lost in a sea of similar stores, but even industrial installations and data centres need to consider factors like accessibility and visibility, and how much is appropriate for their needs.
There is also the larger question of city and region. This is especially relevant if your organisation is looking to populate its new property with local talent—you will need to match your choice of locale to population demographics, particularly age and level of education, if you want to have the best choice of potential employees.
Don’t Be Afraid to Start Small
If your organisation is just getting off the ground, sticking to smaller properties in your local area may be your most feasible option. You can even physically scout your area for available properties.
Another underused route is property auctions. Obviously this is no good if you’re looking to rent but if you want to start your business with a modest property investment this can be a way to acquire properties that aren’t available through the usual routes, and if you’re lucky it can also be a lot cheaper. Bid carefully, though, because the last thing you want to do is pay just as much as you would have for a better property through a conventional estate agent.
Use Expert Advice
Commercial properties aren’t usually sold by high street estate agencies. To find them your best bet is to go through specialists in commercial real estate like GVA. Experts like these will have access to a much larger centralized database of properties than any private individual could collate, and offer a guiding light toward the properties best suited for your individual purposes.
One of the great things about drawing on an experienced, professional perspective is that it can lead you to consider options that might not have occurred to you during your own research which ultimately turn out to be ideal for your organisation.
