Increase in Self-Storage buildings
An interesting entry from GMTV this morning about the rise in self-storage units - in this example essentially a building with single rooms with their own padlocks.
We were shown how one woman used it as a closet for clothes, another used it for dance practice including bringing students in, and how some were using it to run small businesses from.
Other than an interesting money making solution (being landlords of large properties) what caught my eye was something that non-landlords/employees might not be aware of and that's business rates.
Unlike domestic rates which use bands where your property is valued and simply sits within its band, businesses are valued by the square metre as well as what that area is used for. Again so what? Well Storage gets one of the lowest valuations.
Imagine a 100m² area. Used for storage the VOA might assess at £5/m² thus a total value of £500. As an office it might attract £30/m² and a value of £3,000. Given a council tax rate of say 40p/£1 the former would attract rates of £200/year and the latter £1,200/year for exactly the same space.So have these offices working out of 'storage' space informed their local councils of the change in use and thus any alterations in their value? Council officials knocking on their doors perhaps.
4 comments:
Dude, how the hell do you know so much about government red tape?
Anyway, here's a question. Are there any storage companies in south Coventry? If there are, I can't find them…
Because I see the rates bills and get asked the question "How come the council is trying to charge us £12k for an empty unit?" Answer - because they're treating it as a workshop at £25/m² instead of the big empty storage space it is at £5/m².
As for self-storage units how about Access or Safestore?
I have high quality storyage building, i buy from Quickgarage.com
a) not that type of storage,
b) I don't they ship to Coventry, and
c) Check the Lorem Ipsum on the Customer Service page.
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