The Storeroom Summary – What to Be Wary of When Buying a Warehouse

Buying a warehouse is a rare experience in someone’s life. Maybe they’re starting a gym, or they need room for their business to store it’s inventory and their house is getting too cramped. Whatever the reason is, getting yourself a warehouse is exciting.

One of the few real estate purchases you can make that you won’t necessarily have to alter or live in for it to appreciate in value, a warehouse is purely functional, which makes it more fun to hunt for one that suits you. The problem with looking for a good, low price on a warehouse is that unlike a house, it doesn’t need to come with all of the amenities of a home. When buying a warehouse, you need to look out for certain red flags, and to help with that we’ve put together a checklist of things to look out for when when purchasing a secondhand warehouse.

 
Pests
Such a big space with such a different style of construction to a house means that you’re bound to have more problems with pests in a warehouse. You’re not going to be able to just spray a bug bomb once in a while and have that take care of the problem, so hiring an exterminator to fumigate regularly is entirely necessary. You can also hire an exterminator to come and check the warehouse for serious signs of pest damage, like termites in the framework.

Plumbing
It’s the last thing people tend to think of, but your warehouse needs to be plumbed in and has to have a functioning toilet for anyone who might be working there. It is essential that you find some commercial plumbers in Melbourne to come out and check your bathroom facilities, the pipes, and the quality of the water coming out of the taps before you put down a deposit. Because these places are less well regulated than private homes, many of them will let these things lapse with disuse, and you could be stuck with a huge plumbing bill if you buy before you have your new warehouse checked.

Electricity
Your wiring is the next thing on the list, because the last thing you need is the electric roller door on your warehouse not opening on a delivery day because you neglected to check the wiring. This also goes back to the pest control scenario, because rats and mice love to chew through power cables, and this can mean a wildly expensive repair cost at a later date.

Hiring an electrician to check this is important, because any building has many cables that aren’t visible to the untrained eye, so testing the light switches and declaring it all ok won’t be sufficient to protect you from potential repair costs.

 
Structural Integrity
Finally, the structural integrity of the place should be checked, to make sure you’re not going to lose a roof panel in a gust of wind or have the ceiling drop onto all of your inventory in heavy rain. A structural engineer should be able to do this for you, and this is an absolute essential if the building is more than a decade old.

As previously mentioned, warehouses aren’t maintained or cared for like houses, so leaks in the roof and cracks in the walls can go ignored for years, all the while getting more and more serious. The last thing you want is to buy a warehouse that needs to be rebuilt due to being unsafe.

With those tips, you stand a much better chance of getting yourself a safe, working warehouse. Remember, the cost of calling out a few professionals to test these things is nothing compared to the cost of fixing these large issues once you own the building.