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Purchase Your Business Location with Attractive SBA Financing

You only need 10% down to buy your own business location through the CDC/504 loan program!

If you are thinking about purchasing a property for your business, now may be a good time to do it. This is especially true if you have good credit and a history of running your business profitably.  The soft commercial real estate market has created some real opportunities.  Property prices are down, some foreclosure properties are available at rock bottom bargains and interest rates are low.  Plus, the SBA loan program designed to help small businesses own their own property is having a sale for as long as the "Stimulus Funds" last and has eliminated two of their program fees making this sweet deal even more affordable. The CDC 504 Loan program provides 90% financing!

Connecticut Office Space Is On Sale Now!

As Connecticut office space vacancies continue to rise, commercial real estate owners will be decreasing asking rents and making concessions to attract credit- worthy tenants in the market today.  Smart owners will aggressively work to fill their buildings and lock in their cash flow now.  Connecticut office space is going on sale in 2009!  How can your small business benefit from this economic downturn?  If your business is stable, now would be a great time to consider trading up to class A space in that swanky office building you've been longing for.

It’s Hot, It’s Cold! Temperature Control in an office building.

Today I visited a company in a lovely office building in West Hartford, CT. It was a first class, multi-story building around 100,000 square feet, no small property.  After a few minutes, I was taking off my jacket and looking for a glass of water. No kidding, it was hot! When I mentioned it to the person I was meeting, she said it was an ongoing problem for them. She said she had asked the building manager to please not turn the heat on that morning because it always got so hot by noontime. The property manger said he had to turn it up because the tenant next door was so cold they needed the heat.

Clearly, this building has a HVAC problem when the control for one tenant's heat is in another tenant's space. So, if you are a tenant in a building struggling to warm up or cool down, here is some information that may be helpful.

Is now a good time to invest in commercial real estate?

The credit crunch in the residential real estate market has caused panic on Wall Street, a sharp decline in home sales and record foreclosures.  However, a similar total melt down has not occurred in the commercial real estate market.  Having said that, there is a definite credit tightening for commercial loans and heightened underwriting scrutiny for mortgage applications.  So, is now the time to look at investing in commercial real estate or will there be a similar value crisis for commercial properties? 

It's Electrifying! How tenant electric is charged to you.

On our site, MySquareFeet, the premier on-line commercial real estate listing service, we frequently get questions from tenants about bills or notices from landlords that they don't understand.  And, we try to answer all of them or direct tenants to places where they can find answers.  Occasionally, a question leads to a good blog topic, as this one did.  Last week, a visitor to the site linked to our FAQ's and asked about a line item in her most recent CAM (Common Area Maintenance) bill.  She wanted to know why there was an electric charge in the bill when she paid her electric directly to the utility company.

Maybe we can help shed some light on this topic.  Landlords handle electric charges in their buildings in a variety of ways.  Here are the most common ways electric use is charged to tenants.

Help! My retail rent is too high, how can I lower it?

Unless you have been living in a cave for the last year, you could not have missed the news that the economy is stalled, no one is shopping, spending is at a standstill and millions of people have been laid off nationally.  What’s a retailer to do?

 

The lease you signed a few years ago in the economic boom, which seemed good at the time is now a millstone around your neck and threatening to sink your business – what can you do now?

 

In response to these hard times, many retailers are forced to shut their doors, but if rent alone is the make or break issue in keeping your business alive, perhaps there is hope – if – your landlord is willing and able to work with you, and you armed are with the right ammunition.

Office Suites, A Sweet Alternative

For Valentine's Day, I thought I would examine a "suite" alternative to leasing conventional office space for small businesses.  They go by many names, Office Suites, Executive Centers, Business Centers, Virtual Offices, or Executive Offices, and offer many different service packages and levels, from basic to gold plated opulence, but they all do one basic thing - provide an immediate plug-and-play office for your business.

I had never actually visited one of these services, so I called upon Tom Jamison of Connecticut Business Centers to give me a personal tour and behind the scenes look at his operation.  It was an interesting visit and I now think about the benefits these services can offer a small tenant in a different light.  To quote Tom, "If you tell me you want an office today, you can be in business with a T-1 connection here tomorrow." 

On Rentable Square Feet, Usable Square Feet and Measuring Office Space

In response to my post “How a bad lease can bankrupt your small business.” I got an email from Jewell in Orange County, CA. She asked:

“What do you do to verify the difference between rentable and usable square feet?  We have had many answers about how it was arrived at…the usable sq ft is 841 and the rentable sq ft is 1067.  I would love to have some tips on how to verify the difference.”

In my twenty plus years in commercial real estate, I have had as many explanations from owners for arriving at building measurements as there are buildings, it seems.  Miraculously, when some buildings were sold, they were one size with Owner A, and the next day, Owner B would re-measure the building and it was significantly larger!  We jokingly called this “rubber ruler” measurements.  However, there are some conventional standards for building measurement which will point you in the right direction.

For Lease Signs or Goldilocks and the Three Bears

A friend of mine was telling me the story of how she was looking for space for her office the other day.  She only needed a couple of offices, which is clearly not the type of requirement that sets a commercial broker's heart on fire, so she decided to try to find it herself.

She had checked on line at my site MySquareFeet but there was nothing suitable posted, then she checked the newspaper but nothing was there either.  So, she took to the road, because "for-lease" signs are commonly found in front of buildings with space available, in fact there were about 50 signs on a two-mile stretch of the Post Road where she was looking.  She told me that it was quite possibly the most frustrating thing she had to do and she went on and on about how the signs were impossible to read, she almost crashed her car trying to pick up phone numbers while going 40 MPH and most of the signs didn't help much.

Her adventure reminded me of the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, some signs were too big, some were too small, but in this case hardly any were just right.

How much space do you need for your business?

As a commercial real estate consultant, here's a questions I frequently hear. "How do I determine how much space I need for my business?" When you are considering a move for your company, or just starting out, you need to plan carefully when you calculate how much office space you need. Either too much, or too little space can be budget breakers.

Having the wrong space can interrupt your business or make it difficult to operate, but there are some techniques you can employ to get it just right. First, you need to assess your current situation, and then decide what your expectations are for the growth of your business over the next few years. Ask yourself the following questions:

• How many people do I currently employ?
• Does each employee need an individual desk or is sharing possible?
• Do I expect to add any staff in the next couple of years?
• Over what period of time will I add the staff?
• What kind of staff will I be adding, executive, administrative, or sales?