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Businesses prefer to buy instead of renting

Aug 30 2007

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Small businesses are increasingly choosing to buy their office space instead of renting, it has been revealed.

According to the Forum of Private Businesses (FPB) more and more enterprises are purchasing their offices and they have more freedom in choosing a location due to their web presence.

Although there is a shortage of properties and some entrepreneurs are waiting to see what effect the interest rate rise will have on the property market, Matt Hardman at the FPB, claims that the temptation to buy is still strong.

He says: 'The experience our experts have is that it was about three to one in favour of buying and that's a large majority.

'But now with interest rates having gone up it has flattened out a bit. The majority still prefer to buy but there's now a lack of premises available.'

Meanwhile, the number of SMEs continues to rise. Figures compiled by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform show that small businesses increased by 2.9 per cent in 2006.

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