Finding the perfect property for your business

With property forming a significant proportion of most businesses overheads and given the seismic changes in how people and businesses use property over the past 12 months, it’s now vital more than ever, to ensure your business property’s delivering what it needs to in order to support your business and people.

Many of our clients across all sectors have a requirement for either additional properties, a smaller site or a larger facility as the impacts of the past 12 months have accelerated various trends in remote working, automation and outsourcing. So once the decision’s made to find a new property, what should you do next?

At Fortus, we adopt a simple methodology:

1. Create the brief: This is the time to really consider what you need from the property and where it should be located. You may also want to consider how your business has and could evolve in order to drive efficiencies. For example can you rack your warehouse more efficiently, which would require a warehouse with a higher eaves height to drive efficiencies and savings?
2. Review the market: Consider working with a specialist to ensure you have access to all opportunities on the market or potentially coming to market soon – there are hundreds of Commercial Property listing portals, some free to the public, others requiring subscriptions. Depending on geography and sector there’s a huge difference in the availability of good commercial property, for example, finding a 20,000sq ft warehouse in the Midlands will be much more difficult than a 5,000sq ft retail property in Yorkshire.
3. Select and review: Once a perfect property’s been identified, we then carry out legal and technical due diligence of varying degrees, to ensure the property’s fit for purpose and there’s no nasty surprises. If it’s all clear, we can then negotiate the very best deal on your behalf!
4. Get the best deal: Whether buying or leasing, there’s lots of moving parts at play when negotiating a deal and this is where you can really benefit from working with a specialist to ensure you get the best deal on your new property.
5. Manage the Acquisition through to completion: Once the deals done, that’s just half the job. The legal process can be complex and will inevitably throw up various issues that hadn’t been considered previously. This is where a property specialist such as Fortus, can really add value in managing lawyers, planners, funders and other third parties to ensure the new lease or purchase doesn’t fall through and is completed swiftly and efficiently.