When I talk to first-time nursery buyers, especially those who work in the sector and have seen how they definitely don’t want to do it, there is always a common theme. They know what they want. They know the exact distance from home that they will travel. They know what it will look like physically and what the ethos will be throughout.
As a broker, they think my job is to find them that nursery. But, in reality, it is always to help them see that that setting is not what they will eventually buy.
Like anything, buying a nursery is an exercise in compromise, and most buyers will eventually end up with something so far departed from what they initially thought they wanted, yet, and this is the key point, still somehow exactly what they want it to be.
For me, this means that if a buyer tells me that the nursery must be within 20 minutes of where they live, I’ll convince them that they should have a search area of an hour. If the setting must have a minimum of 50 places, then they should be looking at those settings with 40 places but room to grow larger.
As the market grows and gets more competitive, the more rigidly a buyer sticks to their initial checklist, the less likely they will eventually buy. Their dream setting is exactly that, their dream, so why would someone else’s dream look like theirs? But, on the off chance that the dream comes true, having waited patiently, they may then find themselves unable to make the dream a reality. Because being open to compromise on the perfect setting not only expands their search criteria, but also makes them a better buyer.
Having already looked at other settings they will have a clear idea of what is an absolute deal breaker for them, they will understand the financial modelling and how the valuations work, they would have looked at how to secure finance and put in place what is needed so they can move faster when that perfect setting comes along. All these things make them more attractive as a buyer to the vendor.
