Renting a Warehouse in Austin?
What is involved in renting a warehouse? If you are a new business and this is your first run at a warehouse or perhaps you are a young company moving from one warehouse property to the next this blog is for you. Renting a warehouse is not just a process of finding something on the internet and cutting a deal. If it was that simple, then a commercial real estate broker or agents would not need any experience or any mandatory continuing education. Let’s start with the simple things first, identification. Finding the right warehouse to lease, is probably the easiest part however on some internet sites, the consumer is restricted to seeing what is available. Also, on some sites 60% of the data may be stale or not updated, therefore causing a major time sync in finding the right warehouse to rent. Also understand that is going to take 2X the monthly rent for you to execute a lease, meaning you pay 1 month in advance plus 1 month of security deposit.
Financials and Credit
We come across this and you will too as a tenant every time you are renting a warehouse in Central Texas. How is your credit? When we ask this of a potential client, we are not necessarily asking do you pay your bills on time? It is a little more intricate than that. From experience since 2004, we know that most landlords especially on large warehouse properties are going to scrutinize your ability to pay the rent on time and judge your capacity to pay consistently over the full term of your lease. So what should you expect?
- Be able to provide the last 2 years of income tax statements to provide evidence that your business is doing well
- Be able to provide bank statements for the past 2 months. -Your banks statements obviously show solvency. Rule of thumb? Have at least 8 months of more “Surplus cash” in your bank acct. Example: If you are renting a warehouse for $3,000.00 per month (all in) , you should have at least $24,000 cash in the bank. The more the better.
- Startups same rule as above with bank statements, however be ready to be asked to sign a personal guarantee when you execute your warehouse lease.