Renting a house for business purpose...

[john4arena]

I am looking to start a residential home in North Wales for people with Bipolar disorder and Depression specialising in Self harm in adults and young adults (care leavers) I have contacted many estate agents and letting agents but to no avail they saying i could not 'rent' a house for commercial purposes. Is this true? is it possible to do this? The inspectorate who govern such premises have no problem with this situation so why? Please advise!

john4efc66@aol.com

[daveyjp]

You will need planning permission to undertake your project. You will need change of use from C3 (dwellings) to C2 (residential institutions). Agents only act for owners and if I owned a house I wouldn't want it's use changing. You need to be asking commercial agents for suitable properties rather than residential agents.

[yeahbutno]

Agreed. The problem here is that you need a commercial lease, and you're trying to take on a residential one - that really wouldn't be any good for either yourself or your landlord.

If you take out a residential lease, your landlord could give you notice at any time, and you would be faced with finding a new premises in double-quick time, or your business simply having to fold. Either way, you'd have a lot of stress and expense.

From your landlord's point of view, offering a commercial lease generally provides you the tenant with guaranteed security of tenure - potentially for ever. Most people looking to rent out houses do not want to risk never getting back vacant possession of their property.

I guess it MAY be possible to find a property, and persuade the landlord to agree to a commercial lease, but I'd have thought it was unlikley TBH. As daveyjp says, you need to be talking to commercial agents rather than residential ones.

If I might be a little blunt here John; this is actually a fairly basic piece of information for anyone in business - pehaps I could very tactfully suggest that you may not have done a huge amount of research into what could potentially be a very lucrative, but also very risky project? I would really recommend you seek out some independent business start-up advice from a professional before taking the plunge.

Good luck.

[john4arena]

Thanks for advice but of course ive contacted commercial agents they say they would never have a house for rent as they would not take one onto thier books, they say it is a residential situation!

Residential agents say they would never let a house for use in a commercial venture!

My avenues lately have been to contact landlords direct and have had reasonable feedback, they are concerned about change of use and length of lease i may require but to be frank they all responded when i informed them that i would pay an increased rent in exchange for a guarantee of at least a 3 year let, YBN i bet you would let your house to the devil himself for double the rent mate! as usual money speaks loudest!

The planning dept have said the main criteria is room size and areas to be used etc they are not to concerned about change of use more the practibility as business rates are calculated based on business area used..

Thanks for your advice davey!

Yeahbutno pull your neck in mate you aint infallable and for your information i have 2 business advisors, who believe or not dont go out and find these places for me, so dont be posting replies to something you obvioulsy no little about i suggest you watch the boards for a while you may learn something then you can be as 'blunt' as you like matey!

Thanks for your best wishes tho!

[yeahbutno]

John - I was never intending to rebuke you, quite the opposite in fact. Apologies if I didn't express that too well. I currently own and rent out two commercial properties, one of which is a house used for business purposes, so I thought perhaps my thoughts on the subject might be of use to you. :confused:

I don't claim to be infallible, and I never suggested that your business advisors would go out and locate your premises for you - BUT I think they should be able to give you decent advice on commercial leases. Maybe I do "know nothing" but you are looking to invest a significant sum of (presumably your own hard earned) money into a project that would be worthless if you found yourself evicted a few months down the line.

The majority of new business start-ups fail within the first year or two, and that is often because the people haven't done their homework properly. I was concerned that may have been the case here, but I stand corrected John.

All the best with your project.