Buying the premises your business runs from.

The rent-versus-buy question, framed properly.

Every year, a Hunter business paying rent is buying its landlord’s building — slowly, and with nothing to show for it at the end. Buying your own premises reframes that: the occupancy cost becomes a mortgage on an asset the balance sheet holds, the lease risk disappears, and decisions about the property — fit-out, expansion, staying put — become yours alone.

Framed honestly, the question is never just “is the repayment more than the rent?” It is whether the capital deposit could work harder elsewhere in the business, whether the right building exists in your band at all, and whether you are paying what the market actually pays — or what a vendor hopes. The first two questions are yours and your accountant’s. The third is ours, and it is answerable with evidence.

A buyer-only search, start to finish.

We act for the buyer and no one else in the transaction. The engagement starts with a written brief — budget, purpose, constraints, walk-away lines — then a search across on- and off-market stock, priced against settled dealings in your band. Before any offer, the stress-test: the building’s condition and compliance, the outgoings history, and the exit story if the business ever moves on. Then we negotiate with the evidence in the room, and set the 12-month plan before settlement.

Business owners are busy running businesses. The search, the evidence and the negotiation are the parts you can delegate without losing control of the decision — every recommendation lands in writing, against the brief you set.

The first conversation is short and concrete: what the business pays in rent today, what it needs from a building over the next decade, and what the settled record says that requirement costs in your band. From there the brief either stands up or it doesn’t — and both answers are worth having before you spend a weekend at open inspections.