Six Real Estate Tips to Help Choose Your Store Location

Picking the location for your store or office is one of the top determinants of your business’s success. A successful business turns your commercial real estate mortgage into an equity building vehicle. Following these tips should help you pick a location that can increase your traffic and your sales.

1. Just as in marketing, determine you target market. If your define your target market by demographics, you can research the US Census Bureau’s website to get information on where most of that target demographic resides in your town or metropolitan area.

 

2. Once you have used your target market research to determine where your market is, check where businesses that are similar or a competitor to your business are located in that area. It is no mystery that doctors’ offices are usually in the neighborhood of a hospital and lawyers’ offices are within blocks of the city or county courthouse. In this way you can utilize the marketing research and selling experience of the successful companies.

   Another aspect of locating near competition is that your companies draw from the employee group that has the same skill set. Local incubator companies and state and federal labor offices often have the information of the areas labor pools and markets.

 

3. Consider the transportation aspect. Will you be receiving deliveries from semi-trucks and need to be near a major street with an alley, or just off the interstate? Are most of your employees going to be using mass transit – need to be near bus/train lines? If you are opening a second store, is it in a similar area and easy to get from one store to another? Consider the situations where you have to handle an emergency or will be making regular trips between stores.

 

4. When price is an over-riding consideration. Businesses that either deliver a service to the customer, such as well drillers, or that deliver their product electronically, such as a software business, do not need to be in the “high rent district”, but can find the locations with very affordable rent or purchase prices, such as unused warehouses (and then get creative on interior design).

 

5. Choose your location for year-round residency in mind. Keep in mind winter conditions which will affect the expense of heating your office or store. Buildings with multiple retail or office spaces allow for  sharing certain expenses, such as snow plowing the parking lot, with the other tenants.

 

6. Use the knowledge of your real estate agent. It is always good to know the history of a building and the neighborhood – what businesses succeeded and which ones failed and why. This can help you from repeating another business’s same mistakes.

Every new business faces challenges, however, by choosing a beneficial location, you have overcome one of your company’s biggest start-up tests and placed yourself in the best position to succeed. When you locate your commercial property, turn to US Business Finance Corp for your best avenue to obtaining a commercial real estate loan. We have the experience and mortgage industry network to find you the financing you need.

Filed under: Marketing and Sales, Real Estate, Your New Business