Chair Thomas-Henry questions Khan on whether SBS advises businesses on purchasing vs. leasing property
Thomas-Henry asks whether SBS counsels small businesses on the option of purchasing their property instead of leasing. Khan says businesses don't typically ask about purchasing and SBS doesn't have a specific service for it, but notes SBS does connect businesses to SBA loans for property purchases when requested.
I would say in some of the, well, I'm going to just speak for the outer boroughs.
And even on some of our tours in some other districts, I've heard from tenants who are currently about to go through lease negotiations, mentioned that when they first went into the premises, that they were offered the opportunity.
Opportunity to purchase the property under the
commercial lease assistance program or any programs within SBS, do you guys do any type of counseling as it pertains to
speaking with small businesses to show them the options as if they were to take this lease or to just go ahead and purchase that property, what that could look like and do for their business?
Seeing that a lot of the pitfalls from these.
The businesses that reach out to us are asking for support with the lease assistance piece of the issue that they're navigating when they're starting a business.
They don't reach out to us on purchasing, but we also don't have a service for purchasing, so that may explain.
It can be an option because a business, as a former business owner, sometimes you don't know what options are available to you.
Almost similar to renters who think they can't be homeowners.
Sometimes all it takes is someone asking the question, have you considered this?
And is that something where SBS could do just a simple projection?
Because if you're leasing...
A space at X amount per month for an X number of years, what's the benefit versus buying that space and not having to worry about that lease renewal 10 years from now?
A whole lot in that.
I mean, it's interesting in that when we did the walkthrough in Harlem with Councilmember Salam and we asked the business owner, my understanding of that conversation was they would never even dare to dream of buying that building because of the rate, the market rate price of that commercial property.
And so we're in a situation where businesses are struggling to hold on to their commercial leases.
So it's tough to envision a scenario where it would be a very popular service to offer to businesses to buy in this current market condition, maybe in a condition where there's some level of availability.
Of commercial storefront stock that allows for more options.
It would help not only on the tenancy side, but it would also help with the purchasing.
I did want to make a correction.
When businesses, when they do reach out to us saying they need money, significant amounts of money, our whole financing operation does support with that.
And we even...
Connect New Yorkers to some of the SBA loans that are available for the purchase of properties.
So there is the resources that already exist.
We are connecting New Yorkers to those, but when they ask for that resource.
I think your question was more, would we go out and ask a business owner if they're interested in purchasing property?
Just advising, like when they come in to speak about their current lease, just if it's something they thought of.
Yeah.