The legal must-haves
Three things to have in place before the unit is marketed - not after:
- A valid commercial EPC. You need an Energy Performance Certificate before you market a commercial property, and it lasts ten years. In England and Wales the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard means a commercial property generally cannot be let on a new lease unless it is rated E or better (a few exemptions exist and must be registered). If the unit is F or G, budget for improvements or an exemption before you advertise.
- An asbestos register for any building built or refurbished before 2000 - the duty to manage asbestos in non-domestic premises sits with whoever controls the building, and tenants and their contractors will ask for it.
- The safety basics you are responsible for as landlord: electrical installation in safe condition, any landlord-supplied gas appliances checked, and fire safety for the parts of the building you control (common areas and shared escape routes). Exactly who is responsible for what inside the unit is set by the lease, so decide that when you decide the terms.
Have the documents ready to send; a tenant who has to chase them loses momentum.
Measurements, rent and terms
Measure the unit properly - floor area in square feet and square metres, and note whether it is gross internal or net internal area. Tenants filter searches by size and will measure it themselves; an optimistic figure costs you trust at the viewing.
Set a realistic rent. Look at comparable units on Boxpod and elsewhere, express it per year (and per sq ft if that is how your market talks), and decide whether VAT applies - if you have opted to tax the property, say so. Know the rateable value too, because tenants will ask what the business rates are.
Decide the lease you will offer before anyone asks: term length, whether you will accept a shorter term or a break clause, deposit, who repairs and insures (most small commercial leases are full repairing and insuring), service charge if any, and whether the lease will be contracted out of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. You do not have to publish all of it, but you need to know it so you can answer confidently and agree heads of terms quickly - the step-by-step letting guide covers what goes into them.
Photos and description
Photos sell the viewing. Six or more, in daylight, with the unit empty and tidy: frontage, the main space from the entrance, the roller shutter or door, any office, mezzanine or WC, the yard or parking, and the access road. Straight, level shots from a phone are fine; dark, cluttered or sideways ones are not.
The description should read like a plain answer to "what is it and what can I do with it": type of unit, size, location and access, power supply, eaves height, loading, parking, heating, use class, what is included, when it is available, and the rent. Leave out the adjectives and put in the facts - that is what tenants (and, increasingly, the AI assistants they ask) are scanning for. The finding a tenant yourself guide goes into presentation in detail.
Creating the listing
With the above in hand, the listing itself takes minutes. On Boxpod: choose a plan (from £12 a month for one unit), create your account, and add the unit through the dashboard - photos, size, rent, location, description and contact details. It goes live straight away, enquiries come to your email or phone, and you can edit the rent, photos or availability whenever you like. How Boxpod works shows the whole flow.
Then the job is answering enquiries fast, showing the unit, agreeing heads of terms and letting a solicitor draw up the lease - the same four steps whether you do it yourself or pay an agent a percentage to do them for you.