Should you buy a building for your business?
Anna Stubbs • February 5, 2025
Tired of paying rent for your commercial premises and considering buying a premises for your business?
Owning a building works best if your business is well-established, you have money to invest, and you’re taking a long-term approach – it can take many years for this decision to pay for itself.
The advantages of owning a commercial property
- You no longer need to worry about dealing with a landlord. You’re the landlord now, so your lease won’t end and you get to make all the decisions about how the premises is used. If you want to make changes to the fitout, it’s up to you.
- You don’t have to worry about rising rent. Eventually, owning a premises will be cheaper than leasing. When you continue leasing, you can expect the rent to keep going up – sometimes the jump may be substantial.
- If your business moves or closes, you still own the building. This can be a highly valuable long-term asset, depending on the type of building and the potential tenants.
The advantages of leasing your business premises
- Leasing gives you more flexibility. You can move if your business gets too big for the space, or downsize if more people are working from home.
- You don’t have to worry about paying building expenses like rates, warrants of fitness, and insurance.
- Your rent is likely to be lower than the servicing costs for a commercial property loan, boosting cashflow so you have more to invest in the growth of the business.
- The landlord will take care of repairs and maintenance on your building – when there’s a leak, for example, it’s not your problem.
- Commercial buildings are typically expensive and financing is costly, so you’ll need to do plenty of research before you decide to make a purchase.
We can run a cost-benefit analysis
Could buying a building be the right choice for your business? We can work with you to analyse the costs and benefits of each option, to help you make an informed decision about which one will put you on track to achieve your goals.
Get in touch today, we’d love to hear from you.
In 1961, President John F Kennedy famously announced his goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth before the decade was out. As we know, in July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the moon, and were brought back to Earth safely, achieving JFK’s goal. At a time when most people hadn’t even been on an aeroplane, landing on the moon would’ve felt unachievable and overwhelming. However, such a massive goal united people with a purpose; the story goes that even a cleaner mopping the floor at the space station said his job was to help put a man on the moon. So, how did they make the goal achievable? They broke it down into milestones, with each one taking them closer and closer to achieving their ultimate goal. The first milestone was to achieve lift off. So, they set about resolving this challenge. The next milestone was to reach orbit, so they had a team working on this milestone. Then, they had to reach the moon’s atmosphere, land safely on the moon, take off from the moon, enter Earth’s atmosphere and land safely back down to Earth. You can see how breaking the goal down into milestones gave everyone a more achievable objective to focus on which was less overwhelming. Those milestones were then broken down into the actions which needed to be completed. Each action was essentially a small step towards reaching the ultimate goal.
Are you undercharging for your services? It can be hard to tell, particularly if you’re in a niche industry or you’re a contractor. Costs have been rising, so it may be time to rethink your own pricing.
For your business to make money, you need to generate revenue. You produce revenue through your usual business activity, by making sales, getting your invoices paid, or taking cash from paying customers. So, the better you are at selling your products/services and bringing money into the business, the higher your revenue levels will be. But what actually drives these revenue levels? And how do you get in control of these drivers?