If you currently invest or are considering investing in commercial real estate, here are some commercial property terms you should be familiar with.

rectangular building

When deciding whether to build a rectangular or square building, there are several factors to consider. For one, it may be important to know that the square building generally has a smaller footprint. For example, a 40,000 square foot building built as a square would be 200 feet x 200 feet. However, that same building as a rectangle could be 100ft x 400ft and still be 40,000 square feet.

Although they are the same square meters, if you are going to build:

• 200 x 200, you have exactly the same walls.

So you only have 800 linear feet of wall to build.

• 400 x 100, you have 400 on both sides or 800 feet, plus 100 on each end, or another 200 feet.

So, you have 1,000 linear feet of wall.

Although the number of linear feet involved is less with a square building, lowering construction expense, many more rectangular buildings are being built. Why? An important factor shaping this result is that it is easier to fit the roof on a rectangular building. The maximum frame length from a practical economic efficiency standpoint is 50 feet. As soon as you have more than that, you’ll have insanely higher engineering requirements to build that truss, due to the extra length in roof it has to support.

Column spacing and bay depth

These are important business property terms to understand, because if you have a 400ft x 100ft building, you should have a column in the middle of this building. That means your trusses are one column apart. This becomes important when your tenant requires more usable interior space. If your tenant is using large trucks, trailer movers, and similar equipment in their warehouse and trying to navigate a column with 200 foot trusses, they would run into trouble.

Therefore, more buildings like this are being built, due to the necessary elements, such as the space between columns and the depth of the bay. Normally, your columns will be 20 feet apart. So if you have a 100 foot building, the column is 50 feet. It has a total of 50 feet of what is called the clearance area. In fact, you can run a trailer motor in that area without worrying about any sort of column spacing or impediments. The utility of the space becomes greater, even if it costs more to build it.

Also, the cost of trusses is lower and offsets the additional cost in linear feet of wall space. Most of your tenant companies on this type of property are going to be doing a lot of storage. If they want your warehouse facilities for storage, whether long-term or short-term, there must be access to that storage.

Tip: The more efficient the storage access, the more efficient the space for the user.

Stay tuned for upcoming articles with more business property terms you’ll want to know.