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Posted on June 29, 2009

Contributed by Tawnya Gilreath, CBB

Selling A Business With A Month-To-Month Lease


Depending on the type of business, a month-to-month situation can be severely detrimental to the value of the business. For example, if you are the owner of a mailbox store for sale, it is unlikely a Buyer would risk buying the store without a solid long term lease. The customers renting the mailboxes are tied to that specific address. If the store is forced to relocate, many customers and thus much revenue would potentially be lost.

On the other hand, if you are the owner of a wholesale distribution business and you have no walk-in traffic, it makes no difference where the business is located. The Buyer may desire to relocate the business in which case a month-to-month situation is highly desirable.
If your business is retail and your clients are local, you may be able to relocate the business within the same area and retain most if not all of your customers -- as long as they know where to find you.

There is no "one size fits all' answer or solution in business transactions. That is part of the challenge. Every business is unique as is every Buyer and every Seller. A good business broker must be a creative problem solver and must focus on making sure the Buyer and the Seller both get what they need from the transaction.

See all contributions from Tawnya Gilreath, CBB

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Comments:

Listing a business for sale with a month-to-month lease is really a risky thing to do. Most lessors want a commitment from tenants for a longer period. And if there is no such arrangement, it makes me worry that the landlord wants to be able to get rid of the business as a tenant whenever a better offer comes along. I would advise a buyer who is interested in a company with that kind of lease to make an offer subject to negotiating a satisfactory lease.

Posted by: Alex Max

One benefit of a month-to-month lease is that it gives the buyer the chance to negotiate a new deal with the land owner. The buyer isn't stuck with accepting a long-term lease at the terms that might have prevailed a few years ago when it was more of a landlord's market. Now things have switched around and the buyer might be able to get pretty good terms on a long lease. A few years from now, when the economy is improved and rental rates have gone back up, the business owner who negotiated under today's conditions might have a very favorable rental situation.

Posted by: Steve C.

It's true that you can't apply hard and fast rules in every single situation. But it's almost always a problem to try and sell a business that does not have a long-term lease, and at a fair market rate. Even in the situation of a wholesale distribution business, like the broker talks about, a buyer is usually going to want a lease for a couple of years, anyway. The freedom to move out is good for the buyer, but it's a double edged sword, because the landlord has options also. Like raising the rent or deciding to lease to another tenant.

Posted by: Louis Tek

The person I know who bought a business with a month-to-month lease didn't have to worry about location, because it was a food processing company. It could be anywhere close to a freeway. But he's lucky he didn't have to move because it would have been very expensive to haul the equipment and set it up in a new warehouse. He started to worry about that AFTER he bought the business. Before then, he was thinking "no problem" about the m-t-m lease.

Posted by: Lyla L.


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