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Your place of business is a huge decision that must be made for your company. At the same time, the way in which you acquire the building will impact whether it’s the best value, location, and quality that it can be. Everyone’s situation, goals, needs, and company is different, meaning the best choice will differ too. These are choosing to rent, to build it yourself, to buy something that fits your needs, or to buy something that needs to be overhauled and re-purposed before it will work. This is the second part of the examination of the positives and negatives of leasing your space. The first focused on Renting vs. Owning, and the types of businesses that may want to rent and the types that need to own. This one will focus on the middle of the road, pragmatic solutions.

When Should You Lease Long-Term?

The middle ground is finding a space that is the appropriate size and contains the core features needed, but needs a moderate level of contractor work. This is only recommended if you can find a landlord that is willing to give you a long-term lease, with the option of First Choice to resign as you are making a serious investment in their property when you make these renovations and adding value to both you and their business.

An Example of Long-Term Leasing

Take for example a real estate company that needs a 2000 square feet open floor plan with one managerial office, and relies on finding the best location for foot traffic to thrive. That location may change every few years and as such, buying might not be the most prudent option for them. In that case it can be cheaper to find a place, for example, that consists of many individual rooms and simply tearing down the walls that are not structural and replacing them with built-in low height desk separators. Cubicles are made to limit interaction, a low-height style allows interaction as needed but still has the benefit of allowing separation when needed. If you need a short term solution buying portable cubicles can work, and can be resold later.

Long-Term Leasing vs. Custom Building

But leasing long-term and custom-fitting it for your needs can be a good in between when trying to bring down the cost of labor and materials for contractors. Even when trying to decide between leasing a space that is not a perfect fit or building your own that has your exact specifications, either option can be made to work in your favor.

Both can still be looked at as an investment, because even though you will not gain equity, you are saving a serious amount of money which can be capitalized upon by having a space that fits you and allows you to make more profit simply because it fits your needs and was acquired at a reasonable price. In this case you can alter things like the lighting of the offices and rooms available, potentially the location of the restrooms, make small modifications to any windows or doors while making sure that you have the flooring and wall paint colors that fit your branding best.

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