How to Lease a Building for an Engineering Firm

Lease a building for your engineering firm in order to provide an environment of productivity to your team and also add legitimacy to your operation. If you intend to have clients come and visit your place of business, you can make a strong case for having an office for your engineering firm.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Commercial real estate broker
• Attorney

Evaluate Your Office Space Needs

1. Anticipate how much office space your employees will require. Estimate that each employee needs approximately 200 square feet of cubicle space, but also take into account whether there will be any executive suites for the partners.
2. Choose what additional facilities the firm requires. Restrooms and kitchens come standard but also figure out whether the firm needs a separate space to house networking equipment or to store maps and blueprints.
3. Calculate the minimum square footage the firm needs to operate.
4. Calculate what the firm can afford to pay for office space.

Shop For an Office Building to Lease

5. Consult with a commercial real estate broker as you search for a building. Specifically, look for an office-space specialist who knows the opportunities in the area.
6. Consider the parking needs of your firm when looking at buildings.
7. Partner with another business or firm and share the office building and its amenities in order to cut costs.
8. Ask about putting the engineering firm's name or logo in a prominent place on the building. This raises the profile of the firm and the advertising generated can help justify the leasing of an entire office building.
9. Take the neighborhood into account. Location can be a practical consideration as well as an aesthetic one. Also, cities may offer incentives to businesses willing to lease property in a previously depressed area.

Close on a Building

10. Pay particular attention to the monthly rate, the length of the lease and any adjustments made to the lease over time. These terms can seriously affect the health of your firm.
11. Hire a real estate attorney who can go over all the terms of the lease exhaustively. There can be hundreds of terms associated with leasing a building, all of which can bear upon the bottom line. A seasoned real estate attorney makes for an indispensable ally.

Tips & Warnings

• A net lease can require a tenant to pay for the taxes, maintenance or operating costs of the entire building. A triple-net lease requires the tenant to pay all three.

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