Hello AW,
Looking to move my practice from my home, so far my options are, a leafy detatched office in a national park or an office in the middle of a busy highstreet.
The rural office is beautiful, very peaceful, has a welcoming atmosphere, plenty of parking clients and future employees.
The urban office is in a city, so it will be more visiable to potential clients, but it lacks parking and the area isnt the greatest.
Would be great to hear from people who have been through a similar process.
Thanks
Edit to add: A mix of clients but moving towards companies rather than "one man bands", I did wonder if the city office may not help much in this regard.
Replies (5)
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I am located in an urban office. It's not on a busy high street, but it is on a main route in and out of town.
I can say the big advantage of such a location is that it serves as free advertising. We regularly have people making enquiries, simply because they remember seeing our office when they passed.
Your main problem is parking. (ours is limited, but usually enough for our purposes) Are there parking facilities near the urban office and do they have a cost? If there either aren't any, or they are costly then that could be an issue for you. If you look to go ahead with the urban office, it might be worth looking into whether there is any local parking space you can rent.
A friend of mine has a practice on a busy high street. She just pays the pub next door £100 a month to use the car park.
For me personally their is no benefit whatsoever in having a office premises, As i only deal with pubs so i see my clients 6 times a year when doing their stock-take.
Our practice is in a rural location. We are actually situated on a smallholding and the office is a converted calving shed about 50 yards across from the house.
Just about all of our clients come from word of mouth and being situated deep in the country has not caused any problems workwise. In fact I think we are the only accountants where the clients children want to come as well in order to see the ponies donkeys, goats and chickens.
If you already have a decent clientele and word of mouth is your way of obtaining new clients then the rural option should be favourite.