Okay so we have decided to sell our location we opened in 2006, we are keeping our original location we opened 14 years ago. (So it is just the real estate and equipment)
We are in a small town of 7,000. Any words of wisdom?
We are supposed to meet with a commerical broker today. My gut is telling me he may not be the right one to use but is the only commercial broker in our area. Some of my concerns is he is owner of 2 major retail shopping centers they are building in our area…so his plate is full and may have a conflict of my interests as he is needing to fill his spaces. Called him Thursday, it took him 6 hours to return my original call. He is suppose to call me today, to talk. I think when I called I wanted to meet sooner and get the ball rolling. He was pretty laid back and said when I get time I will go by and look at the property and call you Monday.
I am thinking of calling the agent we bought the property from. (It is a real estate company comparable to Dolan) They handle commerical real estate and residential. They have several agents and their office is in town. (The other guy has an office about 30 minutes away)
As I have researched all weekend commerical property around here his couple of listings don’t show up anywhere, the other company has listing which show up with just general search.
I am sure this post seems a little “dumb” but I am soooo nervous. Business has been pretty good but the hours are killing us. A recent thread of posts confirmed we needed to sell. We are the ones working people talked about… working 16 hour days, making a couple of bucks. Our original location does double the sales and most months carries the new location. So the question always is what are we doing all this for? And the answer is nothing. Selling will give us our lives back. It will enable us to be debt free.
The down side is our employees will lose their jobs, our pride will feel a blow for not being able to pull it off but when it comes down to it I would rather have a life.
I so respect this forum and appreciate any of your thoughts, opinions and suggestions.
I called the original broker’s cell phone this morning. No answer and still hasn’t called back.
So we called the local gal. She met with us within a couple of hours. They are looking into comps and etc. We had to list all the equipment and the value of it. We also had to give her our gross sales. Thought that was a bit odd but what do I care really. She said it would be used only to evaluate the real estate.
We valued our equipment at 50,000 (it won’t include small wares.) Our gross sales come in at 450,000.
We have had 2 managers since we have been open. Both seemed very promising but they ended up just creating more issues. We have been working with 2 others hoping one of them would be an obvious choice but as time goes on I find neither of them are the right choice. Sure we can keep looking and training but ughhhh for what? A couple of extra bucks…nahhhh.
It is just double the issues having two places. It all comes back to a life. My grandmother passed away a few weeks ago and it was difficult for us to get both stores covered to go to her funeral. It was a reality check, about what is truly important. At least when we only had one store we could manage to make it happen without a doubt. It just is too much.
I am so thankful we opened the second location because our life lessons have been great. I realize money is not what life is about. It is about the here and now. I am done chasing after the wind.
I don’t expect to make much off selling, I just want enough to walk away.
Kris
If we always do what we have always done, we will work our life away.
