Real estate
Who it's for
This path does not fit every practice owner, and saying so up front saves everyone a conversation neither side needed.
This tends to fit
- You have a long runway left in your current location and no plan to move.
- You lease from a third party landlord and have never questioned that arrangement.
- You are approaching a transition and have never separated the practice from the property.
- You paid for the buildout yourself and it is still doing work for you every day.
- You want your children or an associate to have the option of taking over the space.
- You are willing to treat the building as its own decision, with its own advisors.
This tends not to fit
- You expect to leave the location within a short window.
- You want a passive holding with no involvement in the building you occupy.
- You are looking for a financial product rather than ownership of your own space.
- Your practice is under strain and the building is not the problem to solve first.
- You want a single decision that settles the practice and the property together.
If you are somewhere in between, and most owners are, the honest answer usually comes from looking at the lease and the timeline rather than from a general rule. That is the first part of how it works, and it costs you nothing to find out.
The other path
Employee ownership is the other path
A staged exit through an employee stock ownership plan addresses the practice rather than the property. The two are separate decisions and either one can come first.
Explore ESOPAbout the numbers on this page
- Any figures or ranges shown here are illustrative examples. They are not a forecast, a promise, or a typical result.
- Nothing on this page is an offer to buy or sell securities, or an offer to enter a transaction of any kind.
- What a property is actually worth, and how a deal is structured, depends on that property's own market, financing, tenancy, and terms.
- Talk to your own tax advisor and your own attorney before making a decision. We are not providing tax, legal, or investment advice.
See where the practice stands first
The Practice Report Card is free and gives you the other half of the picture.