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In the long term, we'd much rather own our building.
Price: $600K maximum, including any construction and fitting-out
This would be painful, but appears to be possible.
This maximum should increase at about $25K per year.
Based on a small number of samples, the type of building we want seems to currently cost about $100/sf.
Very few buildings of the type we want seem to be available for sale.
We must be able to get an exemption from real estate taxes reasonably easily.
These taxes are likely to run $10-20K per year; this is a substantial fraction of our typical year's net income.
In theory, they must give us an exemption; in practice, some cities/towns might tie us up in bureaucracy forever. We need to find out in advance whether we'd have to fight for it.
We must plan on owning two buildings for a significant amount of time:
The new building will undoubtedly require some renovation and fitting-out to suit our purposes, and this will be much easier to do before we start moving in.
It may take a while to sell the old building, even if we set the price low.
We should expect to need a bridge loan.
Given our somewhat unusual business model, convincing a bank may be difficult.
There are firms which will inexpensively design and construct semi-custom industrial buildings, so buying vacant land and building on it is possible.
LASFS is dealing with a builder using products from Advanced Foam Plastics, Inc.
Another possibility is GE Capital Modular Space.
This page is maintained by Dave Anderson, and was last modified at 10:45 am on 5 June 2003.
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