By NICOLE WILLIAMS
HIGH rent in High Street is putting added pressure on businesses renting office or retail space.
President of the Berwick Village Chamber of Commerce Harry Hutchinson said businesses were already doing it tough and high rents were seeing business deserting the area for cheaper rentals elsewhere.
He is calling on landlords to be more flexible when rents come up for renewal to ease the pressure on tenants and ensure there were fewer vacancies.
“Rents in Berwick are 20 per cent higher than they should be,” he said.
“A lot of businesses are doing it tough at the moment.”
Jim Byrne from Jim Byrne Real Estate said rents were around $1000 a week for retail space.
“From a small business point of view, that is $50,000 a year before they make any money,” he said.
“It is having an impact.”
Mr Hutchinson said the shopping strip currently had three retail vacancies which had been sitting empty for 12 months or longer.
“It is concerning that High Street has never had vacancies and if it did, it was only for a short time,” he said.
“Once you get one, two, or three it spreads like wildfire.”
Mr Hutchinson said business moving out of Berwick had a knock-on effect to remaining traders.
He estimates the strip had lost 200 office workers within a year.
“Those 200 people mean 200 less coffees, 200 less lunches, 200 less people shopping and using the services of Berwick,” he said.
“That’s how we do our business, we rely on those people.”
Mr Hutchinson was aware of a number of Berwick Village businesses that had personally been struggling to negotiate with landlords and had been locked out of the premises as a result.
“Landlords would be better to try and reach an agreeable amount. They need to be more flexible when rents are up for renewal,” he said.
“Wouldn’t landlords prefer to have a tenant than an empty black spot?”
When it comes to flexibility on rental prices, Mr Byrne said it depended on the landlord, but wasn’t out of the question.
“Larger landlords are happier to let smaller shops sit empty but are more likely to reduce the rent on large premises,” he said.
“Some older property owners who own the property outright might be happy for their shops to sit vacant.”
Beaconsfield was also a good example of the impact of increasingly high rents, Mr Byrne said.
“Three years ago you couldn’t rent space in Beaconsfield and now there are at least seven vacant shops, and maybe more,” he said.
“The rents in Beaconsfield are way too high.”
Personally, Mr Byrne said he made the decision to move from an office to a home business to save over $60,000 a year in rent.
“Landlords are very quick to put up rents when the market is good, but slow to put it down when the market slows,” he said.
