Growing or downsizing your commercial property

As a business owner and property occupier and/or owner, undoubtedly, you’re all too familiar with the significant cost of commercial property across your business. With the challenges of the pandemic, it may be that over the last 6 months, you’ve been reviewing your premises and working out what its position is in relation to your current and future business needs.

Maybe you’re looking to continue working from home, so actually, all of a sudden, your 5,000 sq.ft office is far too big for you and your team. Or maybe it’s the other way round, the business has enjoyed positive growth over the past 6 months, and now you need bigger premises – great news!

So, what are your options?

• First of all, it would be worth reviewing your lease, to find out when your lease expiry is, or if you have a break clause. If so, what notice is required to be served on the Landlord. It may be you can serve notice either through the lease expiry, or break clause, which would result in termination of the lease.
• If, however, you have a number of years left on your lease, or it doesn’t contain a break clause, then the next stage would be to look at the options to assign the whole of the property to another occupier. Alternatively, if you wanted to remain in part of the property, you could look at the ability to sub-let some of the space, or finally, enter into negotiations with the Landlord to surrender your lease.

Our Fortus Property Team can manage this entire process for you – review your lease and advise on the best options for your business. It’s likely that whether you’re looking to sub-let or relocate, there will be a requirement to market your existing property, something we can do for you, whether this is advising on rental levels, a marketing strategy or negotiating a deal on your behalf with a new Sub Tenant or Assignee.

We’d also advise on the acquisition of any new site, reviewing locations and buildings with you of both on and off the market opportunities, advising on appropriate market rent and lease terms, and seeing the transaction through to completion. A simple, no obligation review, could save you money. 

A client of ours took a lease on a building for a period of 10 years from 1^st Dec 2019. As a result of COVID, and the shift in working locations, they realised they didn’t need as much office space, and our Property team advised them on the options available to minimise their rental liability. Given the length of the lease, and the other terms within, the only real option was a Sub Lease. We managed to secure a new tenant, and complete the deal, on the basis of a new Sub Lease, within 12 weeks of being instructed. This has saved them around £50,000 per annum in rent and rates.

Click here to view our current property opportunities available.