Moving business premises in NZ: the bills nobody budgets for, and how to fund each one

Your lease is ending, or the space has stopped fitting the team, the stock or the customers. You’ve found somewhere better. Then the real numbers arrive, and they don’t look like the removalist’s quote.

A move isn’t one expense. It’s a run of separate bills that land on different dates, and a few of them land at the same moment your old premises stops earning and your new one hasn’t started. That’s the cash squeeze. The good news: each bill has its own cheapest funding piece, so you rarely need one big loan to cover the lot.

Let’s mix it track by track.

What does moving a business actually cost in NZ?

Draw up the list before you collect a single quote. Most moves include some or all of these:

• Bond or deposit on the new lease, often paid before you get the keys.
• Fit-out at the new space: partitions, cabling, counters, benches, shelving, signage.
• Overlap rent: weeks or months where you pay for both addresses.
• Make-good on the old space: returning it to the condition the lease demands.
• Moving itself: removalists, specialist movers for machinery, IT and phone reconnection.
• Downtime: days when you can’t trade, or trade at half pace.
• Housekeeping: new stationery, vehicle signage, address changes, insurance adjustments.

Add a buffer line too. Moves almost always slip, and each week of slip is another week of overlap rent.

Which bill is the real killer? Usually make-good

Owners plan for the new fit-out and are caught out by the old space. Make-good is the lease obligation to hand premises back in a stated condition. Hesketh Henry describes the usual baseline as returning the space to its commencement-date condition, allowing for fair wear and tear, and removing chattels, fixtures and fittings. It also notes that parties often rely on the standard-form wording in the Deed of Lease without tailoring it.

What that means in practice: the partition wall you built in year two, the signage on the facade, the extra power points and the server cabling may all have to come out, and the space repaired and repainted. Some leases require the work before expiry, others allow a payment instead of physical works.

Do this before you sign the new lease:

1. Pull out your current lease and read the reinstatement clause line by line.
2. Photograph the old space now, including anything you inherited.
3. Ask the landlord, in writing, which alterations they actually want removed.
4. Get one quote for the work, so you know the number rather than guess it.

A known make-good figure is something you can plan and fund. An unknown one is a surprise invoice at the worst time.

How do I fund each bill? The mixing desk

Think of each bill as a track, and give it the cheapest fader first.

Bill	First piece to try	Then
Bond on new lease	Cash from internal levers (see freeing up cash)	Short-term facility if the gap is timing
New fit-out	Landlord rent-free or fit-out contribution	Equipment finance for movable gear; a sized loan for the rest
Overlap rent	Negotiate a staggered handover	A facility timed to the overlap
Make-good	Negotiate scope with the landlord	Sell what you’re removing; cover the balance
Moving costs	Operating cash, customer deposits	Supplier terms
Downtime	Pre-sales, vouchers, prepaid bookings	Line of credit as a buffer

Landlord pieces

Ask the incoming landlord for a rent-free period or a contribution to the fit-out. Neither is guaranteed and it depends on the space, the lease length and your covenant, but it costs nothing to ask, and a rent-free stretch lands exactly where your cash is thinnest. Also ask whether the existing fit-out can stay. A space that already has cabling, a counter or a kitchen can cut your fit-out bill dramatically.

On the old lease, ask whether an early surrender, a sublet or an assignment is possible, which can shrink the overlap.

Sell what you won’t take with you

Moving is the best moment to find idle assets: the old shelving, the spare desks, the second fridge, the ute you stopped using. Anything you sell turns into cash with no repayments. Check the GST and depreciation effects first, which the guide on selling business assets covers, and see selling idle assets for how it fits the mix.

Let customers carry some of the downtime

If a closure is coming, tell regulars early and sell what you can in advance: prepaid packages, bookings for the reopening week, gift vouchers. If you do project work, a deposit on jobs that straddle the move keeps cash arriving while the van is loaded.

Supplier terms on the fit-out

Joiners, electricians and signwriters often work to terms. Ask for staged payment tied to milestones rather than payment up front, and ask suppliers of fittings about the date their invoice falls due relative to your first week of trading. A fit-out paid thirty days after opening is funded partly by the new site’s own takings. Read the supplier’s terms first, because some will register on the PPSR, which affects the rest of your stack (see supplier PPSR registration).

What does the tax side look like for fit-out?

This is a real piece of the mix, because it changes what the move costs after tax.

Inland Revenue says you can claim depreciation on a commercial fit-out separately from depreciation on the building. It describes a fit-out as the interior build-out of a commercial space, such as electrical cabling, fire protection and non-structural interior walls, and excludes structural work and waterproofing. Keep your invoices itemised, so your accountant can separate fit-out from building work.

Separately, Inland Revenue says Investment Boost gives an extra 20% deduction on the cost of eligible new assets, and improvements to depreciable property can qualify, provided the work is complete (or complete to an identifiable stage) and the asset first became available for use on or after 22 May 2025. Second-hand assets sourced from New Zealand are excluded.

What it means for you: the deduction helps your tax position later, not your cash this month. Don’t treat it as a funding source for the move itself. But it’s a good reason to have your accountant review the fit-out invoices before year end, and to factor the tax effect into your forecast. A move late in the tax year also changes your provisional tax picture, so read GST and provisional tax if the move straddles a due date.

Where does a loan earn its place?

After the other pieces are in, what’s left is usually a timing gap: you pay the bond, the fit-out and the overlap before the new site produces its first full month of revenue. That’s the job a sized loan or facility does well.

An illustrative example (made-up numbers). A Hamilton physiotherapy clinic is outgrowing its rooms. The move needs a bond, a new fit-out and two months of overlap, with make-good on the old rooms. The owner works through the tracks:

• The landlord agrees to a short rent-free period, trimming the overlap.
• Treatment tables and equipment move with the clinic, so there’s nothing to buy.
• Old furniture and a spare treatment room’s gear are sold.
• Patients are offered prepaid packages for the reopening month.
• Fit-out invoices are staged around milestones.

What’s left, after all that, is the bond, part of the fit-out and the overlap. That remaining number is what the loan is sized to, not the whole move. If you want to find it, the size your funding gap page walks through the maths, and the funding remixer helps you see where each piece fits.

For the overlap, a facility you can draw on and repay as the new site starts earning typically suits better than a long-term loan. For a fit-out that’s going to outlast the lease, ask how the term sits against the lease length. If you only have three years left on the new lease, a seven-year fit-out loan leaves you owing money on walls you may have to remove.

If you’re moving into a second location rather than replacing one, the same logic sits behind the second site remix, and the shop fit-out remix goes deeper on the build-out itself.

Where a loan might genuinely help: the bond and the overlap rent, because those are due before the new site pays for itself. Let’s look at what that could look like for you, and you can see where you stand in about a minute.

What should I update once the move is booked?

The admin is small but costly if missed:

• Companies Register: the Register asks you to update your company’s address as soon as possible, via RealMe and your online services account. After a change to the registered office or address for service, the old address stays on the Register for five working days.
• Inland Revenue and your tax agent, so notices arrive.
• Bank, insurers and lenders, because your insurer needs to know the new address and risk.
• Suppliers, customers and websites: Google Business Profile, invoices, email signatures, vehicle signage.
• Landlord paperwork: keys, bond refund, final inspection and the condition report.

A sensible sequence for the move

1. Read the old lease and get a make-good number.
2. Negotiate the new lease: rent-free, fit-out contribution, start date.
3. Sell what you won’t take.
4. Line up customer-side cash: prepaid packages, deposits, bookings.
5. Agree staged supplier terms for the fit-out.
6. Work out the remaining gap and size a facility to it.
7. Book the move with a buffer for slippage.

Ready to see what’s left to fund?

Moving is one of the few times a business spends real money on something that isn’t a sale. Done well, most of it gets funded by the landlord, your old assets, your customers and your suppliers, with a loan covering only the timing gap.

If you’ve worked out that gap, or you’d like help working it out, we’re happy to look at the whole picture with you. Enquiring takes about a minute, and because there’s no credit check when you first enquire, asking won’t touch your credit file. We don’t send your details to a pile of lenders, so your phone stays quiet. A real person reads your situation and calls you to talk it through. And please fill in the form as accurately as you can: honest numbers on the bond, the overlap and the fit-out mean we can suggest the right piece first time.

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