Good Lawyer Guide's response

It is important that you know the exact nature of the property before taking on the lease, and having a survey is the best way to do this. The lease will include a term that obliges you, as the tenant, to keep the property in good repair. This means you should know what the current state of the property is before you take it on.

A surveyor will be able to tell you more about the true condition of the property than you would be able to see yourself. He’ll be able to advise you how much it could cost you in the future to keep the property in a good state of repair. It will cost you to have a survey, but it could you save you much more in the long term.

Daniel Stanton's response

The short answer is: yes you should. I work with a lot of hair and beauty salons and I've seen too many clients who didn't have surveys or didn't act on the results, only to come unstuck, to the point of bankruptcy for one unlucky individual.

Do bear in mind that if you are leasing the ground floor and are responsible for a proportion of the cost of the structure of the building, you should make sure your survbeyor looks at this as well, as it's something else that could cost you a lot of money to put right.

You may be able to negotiate with the landlord for limits on your repair liability and there are lots of ways of doing this. Bear in mind though that even if you're not obliged to fix it because you've negotiated it out of the deal, if it needs doing, it needs doing and you may still be left with the cost to keep your business running.

Re: hair salons generally - watch out for planning permissions and subletting restrictions if you are planning to diversify into beauty and nails, rent a chair out or sublet to other complementary services.