Own Your Office For Less Than Four Years’ Rental Costs

Diminishing Costs While Retaining Utility In Architecture

Own Your Office For Less Than Four Years’ Rental Costs

A prefabricated structure can give you the same utility as a rented building and actually end up saving you money. Let’s crunch some numbers to see why. If you’re paying $2,000 a month for a downtown office, that’s $24,000 a year. Additionally, if you’re only paying $2k a month, that’s bottom-dollar, and the office is probably tiny.

You’re a lot more likely to pay $3k+ on a monthly basis; averages on cost per square foot for office space range between $1.92 and $6.16 per square foot nationally. That’s between $2,304 and $7,392 per month for a 1,200 square-foot office. So $2k/month is a reasonable starting figure.

Now when it comes to prefabricated structures, the cost per square foot to build one is between $16 and $40 per square foot. So for the same sized building, you’re looking at $19,200 and $48,000, total.

Granted, that’s probably not going to include insulation, furniture, HVAC, or property costs. But even if we double the expense to between $38,400 and $96,000, you’ve still paid for the entire cost of the building for the same financial expenses you would have devoted to between about a year-and-a-half and four years of rental.

At the high rate, you almost get your money back over the course of year—and that’s if you double the cost of construction in order to incorporate collateral expenses. When you crunch the numbers, the question to ask is: why aren’t you going the prefabricated route? For goodness sake, take out a loan to be paid off within four years.

Finding Prefabricated Building Solutions

According to FidelitySteel.com, a steel building kit offers many advantages: “If you’re looking for multiple garages, storage spaces, barns, airplane hangars, etc., then prefabricated metal buildings are right up your alley. Each can still meet your specifications, but can also be made the same to create a neat, uniform look.”

This provides a new business immediate professional appeal aesthetically. You don’t just get the advantage of an entire complex the size of a house purchased for the cost of rental; if you play your cards right, it looks good too. And that doesn’t take into account the possibilities new technologies are making realistic as regards energy.

Throw solar panels across the roof of your prefabricated buildings. Add some wind turbines to the property. Have a well dug, and pipe your waste to the nearest city infrastructure solution handling sewage. Some businesses are going totally green and using waste as a means of fertilizing plants; though that’s a bit extreme.

The point is, if you’re smart with your money, not only can you source a core location for your business that ends up being cheaper than the cost of rental during your first five years of operation, you can have a business that is entirely off the grid and self sustaining as well, which simultaneously eliminates your utility overhead.

The Bottom Line

If you’re paying $500 a month for utilities, that’s $6,000 a year. Over four years’ time, that’s $24,000. That means four years of rental at $2,000 a month really costs you $120,000 for a 1,200 square-foot space. But if you spend between $19,200 and $96,000 building your own prefabricated building, you actually get more for less.

So to recap: by going the prefabricated steel route, you stand to save between $24,000 and $100,800 in the first four years of use, depending on how savvy you are with construction, energy, and other infrastructure. Imagine the additional flexibility an extra 24 to 100 thousand dollars could give your business.