Simple Ways to Maintain or Add Value to Your Commercial Real Estate Property
Commercial real estate is arguably one of the most lucrative investments around, especially when approached in a wise and strategic manner. Whatever your plans are for the property, whether you decide to rent it out to tenants or use it to house your own business operations, putting some time, effort, and perhaps cash on it will certainly help increase commercial property value that will be beneficial to you in the long run.
So exactly, how do you increase the value of your property without breaking the bank?
There is a myriad of ways to improve the value of a commercial property without spending a ton of money. The key is to make the property appealing to potential tenants, increasing rent, while minimizing its operation or maintenance cost.
The crucial steps that will be covered in this article involve the structural and cosmetics elements of the commercial property and operational costs.
Key Considerations to Help Increase Commercial Property Value
1. Make the essential changes in the structural and cosmetics elements of the property.
Adding more square footage to the property can sometimes be more economical.
Depending on how the property is being used, adding more square footage to meet the needs and demands of clients, or to increase the number of tenants, is really a practical option at times. If adding square footage laterally isn’t possible, then doing it vertically by constructing additional floors is certainly a possibility that may cost you extra, but will be profitable in the long run.
If your commercial property is in high demand, then it may benefit you to add more rentable units such as offices, storefronts, storage facilities and warehouses, and parking space. Again, this all depends on the type of commercial property you have.
Make some improvements on the exterior elements of your property.
The point here is to catch the attention or pique the interest of potential tenants. The best way to do that is to make the exterior of your property more appealing to your target clientele. You should also remember that the external appearance of any property can influence its overall value.
Luckily, there are a few low-cost solutions to help improve the appearance of any commercial real estate property:
- Look for local cleaning and garbage pickup services to take care of the cleaning and garbage needs of your tenants and the entire property. It may not be obvious, but a clean property often presents a significant impact on its value.
- Making sure that the common areas in your property, such as the parking lots, bathrooms, walkways, and the yards are clean is also the easiest and cheapest way to add value to your commercial property.
- Update all exterior furnishings like doors, windows, lawn ornaments, and even security cameras and the paint of the building. This will help improve the overall appearance of the property.
- Invest in landscaping and professional Arborists. Believe it or not, planting trees in your property will not only enhance its visual appeal, but it adds to its value as well. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that your lawns are regularly trimmed and well maintained.
2. Try to improve efficiency and minimize operational costs.
The fact is the reason you want to increase the value of your commercial property is to hopefully increase your profit/income. Now, one way to boost profit is to demand for more rent. But you can’t do that until you increase the value of the property.
There’s a possible easy solution though.
In addition to increasing the property value, you could also try decreasing operational expenses, of course, without sacrificing the safety and security of your tenants. You need to understand that in a commercial property, its value mainly depends on how profitable the property is. Now, profits may increase through raising rents or by reducing the overall operational cost.
And here’s how:
- Switch to energy-efficient light bulbs throughout the property.
- Contact your local utilities company and see if they can individually meter units. This way, you can pass on some of the utility expenses to the tenants.
- Consider investing in modern heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to further optimize your property’s energy consumption.
- Make sure to apply regular maintenance throughout the property. Consistent maintenance is a proactive prevention solution that you should never take for granted.