Читать книгу Building or Refreshing Your Dental Practice - American Dental Association - Страница 52

You have identified a community in which you wish to practice and have a general notion of what type of property that interests you (storefront, medical office building suite, raw land, etc.). So when you locate a possible property what do you look for? Before getting too far along with a negotiation, start your due diligence early by taking a look at several top level items:

• Legal use. Is a dental office allowed on this property? Don’t assume that just because there is a dentist next door that the same use is allowed on your site as well. A real estate agent maybe able to tell you, at least generally, if dental offices are allowable on the site. An architect or city official can most likely give you a more definitive answer.

• Change of use. Would your dental office be a different use than what occupied the site before? If so, then this may be considered a change of use. Changes of use are sometimes granted outright. But often municipalities cite a change of use as a trigger for bringing a property up to current building code. In other words, previously legal aspects of the property may become illegal. Needing a change of use should not preemptively dissuade you from pursuing a particular property, but it is critical to understand if your project will trigger a change of use.

• Access. Can patients and staff get to the location? Is it on a one way street? Where is the front door? Will you have enough visibility? If the site is vacant land, will you need to build a driveway or access road? Front doors are a patient’s first impression. Try to visualize the front door experience now.

• Utilities. Are all utilities on site? If so, are they connected to your building? Utilities include:

• Electricity

• Gas

• Water

• Fire connection (not the same as water for day-to-day use)

• Sewer

• Storm drain (not always the same as sewer)

• Telephone

• Internet

• Setbacks, buffers and easements. When buying property, you should consider asking about these types of restrictions early on. Setbacks and buffers are restrictions on portions of properties adjacent to other properties, public land or environmental features. Easements are contractual agreements between the property owner and others that have the net effect of limiting your use of the property. All of these restrictions transfer with changes in ownership so you are generally stuck with them. Understanding how setbacks and buffers impact a property can often be figured out by researching online at the city website, or with a visit to town hall. Easements are usually revealed in a preliminary title report.

• Square footage. Is there enough land available to build your building and parking? Keep in mind that going up an additional story may cost a lot of money. Upper floors typically require elevator service and some duplication of building services like mechanical equipment. Rentable area is a metric used to charge tenants for a fair share of common building areas like lobbies, bathrooms, and utility spaces. Unless you are renting the entire building, rentable area is always greater than the actual area you will use. Rentable area can be expressed as increasing the tenant space by a “load factor.” Load factors vary greatly but 15 percent is common for office spaces with lobbies and common bathrooms. Closer to 10 percent is appropriate for simpler buildings without lobbies, etc.

• Parking. Parking can kill a project — and not always in the way you may expect. Sometimes a municipality imposes required parking. The financial and square foot burden of constructing parking can swamp the project budget and make the site undevelopable for dental or medical uses. Alternatively, parking can be in short supply and your practice cannot thrive without parking available. This can be especially true for offices in urban areas.

Consult your tax advisor or accountant for a statement of tax and accounting rules applicable to your particular situation and for all other tax and accounting advice.

There are a few metrics to quickly evaluate your parking needs. An easy rule of thumb for parking is one space for each doctor and staff member and one and one half spaces for each treatment chair. This can add up quickly with fifteen plus spaces for a six chair practice. Another way to estimate parking is to apply a ratio of one space per 200 square feet for office space.

For more car-oriented locations, parking ratios in the range of one space per 125 square feet are not uncommon. But many cities are dealing with heavy traffic find more people carpooling and taking public transportation. Recent traffic studies in suburban Seattle found an average need of one space per 225 square feet for medical/dental clinics.

Finally, how much square footage do your parking spaces need? For new lots, assume 325 square feet for each space. 325 square feet per space gives you room for drive aisles and accessible spaces. So, building a 2,700 square feet practice with 15 parking spaces (using the 1:200 ratio) would require another 4,875 square feet of land set aside for parking. Your particular parking needs may vary, but this is a good starting point.

FIGURE 3.1