It now requires me to roll out of bed, get ready, roll into my car and drive on down to my office about 10 minutes away.
Eventually every small business will have to, if not already have done so, move into an office space, to enhance productivity, teamwork and give your clients some place they can come meet you at (your living room doesn’t count as a meeting room).
As I’ve learned, finding someplace right for yourself and your colleagues/ staff is not as easy as it seems.
Hopefully with these tips for getting a small office, you’ll be able to avoid some of the problems I faced when looking for my own one.
Get In Your Car And Drive Around
Most people turn to online portals or the newspapers to find an office to rent, but this may not necessarily yield the best deals.
People who are advertising in newspapers have probably just started looking for a tenant and may still have the patience and the money to leave it empty until the right deal comes along.
Try driving to a neighbourhood where you’d like an office and look around for signs hung/ stuck onto office windows with a real estate agent’s name and phone number.
These places have the best chance of having been empty for a long time – leaving the owner desperate for a tenant and open to lower than market rate prices.
The Higher You Go, The Lower The Cost
My office is located on the very top floor of a block of shop lots and hence has the lowest rent in our block.
Typically, the higher you go, the cheaper the rent becomes because people like convenience and even with a lift, the longer it takes to get to an office, the less people will want to pay for it.
That’s human nature, we’re lazy people at heart.
The Importance Of A Lift
My office has no lift.
As I said earlier, the higher you go, the cheaper your rental becomes.
When we saw that there was no lift, we told ourselves, walking shouldn’t be a problem, it’s good for our health too.
There are a few inherent problems with this statement.
- Your clients probably don’t want to walk up many flights of stairs
- When carrying up anything even moderately heavy (like a laptop on your back), it becomes more than a chore – it becomes exercise.
- Upon reaching the top of your office block, you are sweating as the office air conditioners haven’t been switched on yet.
- Repeat points 1 – 3 for when you leave the office.
But on the positive side, in this area, offices with no lift access can be as much as 50% cheaper in rent than offices with lifts.
If it’s money you are trying to save, then suck it up, climb the stairs and get buns of steel.
Evaluate Your Landlord And Real Estate Agent Carefully
When trying to get a tenant, a landlord and real estate agent will smile, meet and greet you at your beck and call to try and get you to sign the lease.
Our landlord and agent were like that – it took a total of 3 months to receive our tenancy agreement (which should have taken less than 2 weeks), there were hidden charges and amendments had to be made as he was trying to put legal terms in the agreement to make it harder for us to get out of the contract.
So try this test – make your landlord and agent show you the office a total of 3 to 5 times.
If they answer your calls, are welcoming to bring you to see the office all the time, then you know what levels of commitment and professionalism they have.
If they don’t answer your calls or call you back, keep telling you that other people are interested, are just plain rude – then that tells you a lot about how they will probably be down the line.
Get A Lawyer To Look Through The Tenancy Agreement
Most of us (myself included) is no expert in law and the use of words to form legal structures and contracts.
If you have to pay a bit to have a lawyer go through your tenancy agreement, or you have a friend who is a lawyer who can look at it, then do it.
When a lawyer went through my tenancy agreement, by the subjective nature of the use of words, he found that certain sections can be open to interpretation – not in our favour.
A few tweaks, added sentences and discussions with our landlord, we ended up with a fair agreement that both parties can be happy with.
You don’t want to give your 3 months notice only to find that your agreement says that your security deposit would not be given back to you.
When Looking For Furniture, Try Second Hand Stuff
All our furniture is second hand furniture.
It’s not as bad as you think, it’s clean, comfortable and most importantly, it’s cheap.
You’re trying to keep costs down, so why not get second hand furniture and hire a professional cleaner to come and steam clean everything?
The cleaning may be quite expensive, but overall you would be spending much less than if you had bought everything new.
There are of course many more things you have to take into account, but these few will help you on your way to getting a small office for your business.
