Renting Office Space: Know What’s Involved

Office spaces are efficient for business owners and entrepreneurs to run their operations. Sometimes, sharing these commercial spaces with another person in the same line of profession or business is a great idea.

Renting office space is best for lawyers, doctors, financial planners, psychotherapists and the likes. These professionals usually do their work at home and only require office space for meetings.

If you are planning to share commercial space, there are certain things you must consider.

Responsibility

Usually, there is equal responsibility between the tenants renting office space. If someone is already renting the space, you can choose to join as a primary tenant or a subtenant. The primary tenant should inform the landlord about the subtenant and ask for approval.

Decisions

You can have the primary or the master tenant decide how the office space will be used or how it will be designed. But if you have equal ownership and responsibility with the other tenant, you have to find a way on how you will make decisions together regarding the use and design of the space.

Payment

You have to come up with a decision regarding who will be paying for the rent and for the rest of the bills. This is important especially if the use of space and time varies among the tenants.

Common Space

Common spaces are the reception area, the administrative area, work space, office equipment, storage space, kitchen facilities, and the rest rooms. You must come up with an agreement on how you will use the common space and how you will pay for it. You must also agree on how to maintain the common space.

To make sure that the agreements and the payments for sharing a commercial space with other tenants are fairly divided, it is best to consult or hire an attorney.