Hairdressers & beauty therapists, is this a good idea….?

[Spencer2]

Hi all,

We own a building next to my husbands MOT garage. We live upstairs on the first floor in our flat and the downstairs we got a HMO license for and rent out rooms.

I won’t explain too much about the layout but basically there is one room at the front of the building downstairs (not connected to the HMO side) which is empty and cannot be used residentially as there is no access to kitchen area.

Any way, I thought it might be an idea to kit it out and rent it out to an established freelance hairdresser (who has already loyal, local clientele). I say this because it isn’t a shop front and marketing themselves being there may be hard. Although we would be more than happy for them to put signs up outside….

Bad idea? Or am I onto something?

Does it look like it's in the same property essentially as a garage and an HMO though? Because I think that would put off most people who were paying for what is essentially a luxury service, not to mention potential noise from residential units. What about simply as a general office space? Then you would open yourselves up to tenants who aren't necessarily public facing, so they may not care quite as much about what the frontage looks like.

The biggest issue I can see is this is very conditional on there being a well-established local hairdresser near you who for some reason is unhappy with their current premises and wants to move, and who will be happy moving into premises that are a bit out-of-the-way and designed by you. I'd imagine if they're established and successful they'll probably be looking for something bigger/fancier. Also the shopfitting for hairdressing is expensive, they'll need sinks putting in, big mirrors, excellent lighting, and power sockets, so the initial investment will be quite a bit, and they'll probably want to design/install it themselves, especially if they're established as they'll have a better idea of what they want and where they want it. Not sure how you're going to tempt someone to move though.

Having said that it's also worth considering that in this day and age people don't choose hairdressers by seeing a shop on the side of the road and just booking it. Mainly people use Google Maps, will search their whole local area and let the sat nav take care of giving them directions to the place, and will want to see the Google reviews as well as a website with a price list, so being a little bit out of the way isn't that much of an issue nowadays as long as they can put a sign up somewhere so customers know when they've arrived. The main issue is, would customers have somewhere to park?

I wouldn't specify that you're looking for established hairdressers, I'd just rent it out to someone who can pay you the rent you're looking for and a suitable deposit, and let them sort out their business and how successful they make it.

Other people who might be in a similar vein include pet groomers and complimentary therapists.