How To Prepare For A Make Good

  February 3, 2025      Construction, Offices

When ending a commercial lease, whether it’s an office lease, retail lease, warehouse lease, or something else, it’s typical for exiting tenant to have make good obligations. Basically speaking, make good obligations require the exiting tenant to leave their old premises in a certain state. This may mean simply leaving the old facility in a neat and tidy manner, it may be repainting and repairing elements of the building, or it may be as large as removing all fit-out elements of the facility and returning the premises to its empty base state. It can really very between buildings depending on the state of the building before the tenant moved in, the landlord’s requirements, what modifications were made to the building, and much more. All that being said, the make good requirements will be outlined in the commercial lease and will have been agreed to prior to commencing the lease.

So, although you may be relocating your office, it’s still important to consider your old office is left in a good state. This is to avoid fees and repair charges from your old landlord. Fortunately, preparing for a make good isn’t that challenging and, with the help of a company like A1 Precision Solutions, we can make sure it goes smoothly.

Understand What’s In Your Lease

Before commencing your make good, it’s important to understand what the make good actually requires.

As mentioned, make good requirements can vary, and what actually needs to be done will be outlined in your commercial lease. Because of this, it’s best to start with the lease to see what is needed.

If your facility has limited fittings and make good requirements, you may only need to remove the furniture and leave the building in a neat and tidy state. If that’s the requirement, just arrange office movers and you’re likely finished.

However, it’s more likely that your business will at least be responsible to repair any damage done to the building over the course of the tenancy.

Bigger make good requirements may include removing any fit-outs that were installed during the tenancy. This may include office partitions, signage, and even carpeting if that’s what’s specified. Going further, make good requirements may even require a full strip out, getting the building completely back to its base.

As mentioned, all of this will be outlined in the lease.

Make A Checklist Of What Needs To Happen

To stay organised, it’s important to make a list of what needs to happen to complete the make good. Assuming your business is relocating, it’s likely there’s already a checklist relating to the actual move. Just make another pertaining to the old location.

Generally speaking, make good tasks will fall into three broad categories.

Removals: these are things that need to be removed. Furniture is the obvious one here, but it may also include things like carpet and office partitions.

Repair: it’s inevitable that parts of the building may be damaged over the life of a tenancy, so having a list of what needs to be repaired can be handy.

Restore: restoring parts of a building, whether that’s through restoring a building back to its base features or something else, will be a large element of the make good.

If you talk to a professional make good company like ours, we can help you with what needs to be accomplished.

Speak To Your Landlord

Once you have an understanding of what needs to be done, it’s usually a good idea to have a pre-inspection/pre-make good walk through with your commercial landlord or their representative. Here you can go through your checklist and outline what will be completed in the make good process. This is an opportunity for your landlord to see what you’re intending to do for your make good obligations and request any further work, should it be needed. In this way, you can ensure no further repairs or alternations will be needed after your make good company finishes work.

Get A Reputable Make Good Company

A good company that is experienced in make good obligations can help you and your business manage all of this, ensuring you can concentrate on moving into your new premises. Get in touch with us early to make sure everything goes to plan.