small business ideas for commercial property to pay for itself?

[Karimbo]

I work from home - have an AV equipment hire business that I run from a spare room and just use self storage units to store my equipment which was working fine until now.

Insurance has put a squeeze on me and says they are changing the rules and require all their clients to operate out of commercial premisis. I think they feel because I'm a small operator that I'm high risk and they're setting the bar higher.

That's fine, so I'll step up to the challenge and take the next leap forward!

Trouble is commercial property under arches start at £800pcm excluding rates, management fees, insurance etc. So that's a huge overhead just to comply with insurance critera.

Are there any ideas as to how to get basically get the property to pay for itself. Perhaps sublet the property to ebay traders and create small 2x3m "cubicles" for them to use as fulfillment centers. Or start my own ebay side business?

Hotdesking space maybe? - but I will have to furnish?

Share the unit with another business?

Use unit as a temporary delivery facility to store overspill from other warehouses?

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Find another insurance company

What size area do you need for storage, quite often closed down shops in non mainstream area.s can be hired very cheap and just used as premises rather than shops, try a few backstreets around victorian houses, most used to have little corner shops that have long been closed

 

[Karimbo]

Unfortunately there just aren't many insurance companies that would cover what I do. it's a hire company that rents out expensive AV equipment - I asked a few brokers and they all pointed me to 1 company that provides this.

Storage requirements are small currently. In fact I could fit all my equipment into a 2x3m area (stacked to the ceiling - all the equipment in flight cases so stackable). Self storage was an absolute godsend as I could store my stuff for just £140 a month. But that might all need to change now that I am required to have commercial property.

There are quite a lot of very cheap short let properties available, I found one here: [link]

I would snatch this up immediately if it was local to me - this is the perfect starter unit. But I live in East london and this is West London. The commute may as well be London to Cambridge as both would be roughly the same in time.