Hi  Sdlewis ,

First, I would make sure you needed to lease a warehouse as apposed to using a third party warehousing operation.  It’s vastly cheaper to pay somebody with and existing warehouse to handle your warehousing needs than to lease a warehouse.  It depends on the volume of merchandise you are moving.

If you do lease a warehouse, have a knowledgeable real estate agent review the lease.  Commercial lease are not like home lease.  Maintenance clauses for example, need to specify who is responsible fro both inside and outside maintenance.  One person I know leased a facility.  When the roof started leaking after the first rain storm, that person found out their lease agreement did not cover outside repairs.  Nor did the lease cover damages to the product from the water that leaked in.

Hi jgeorgie,

First, what do you need the space for?  Are you just processing transactions or shipping product?  Have you considered sharing an office with someone?  Many businesses in the Vegas area lease an office space in an existing business.  All the tenants in this arrangement pay for the receptionist and upkeep of the common areas in the office.  They also have free use of the conference rooms and meeting rooms within the main office area.  This is a much cheaper and faster way to setup an office.  

If you are shipping a limited amount of product, you could also share an office with someone with a compatible business.  This arrangement might also drive additional business your way.  Or, you could have a 3^rd party warehouse (public warehouse) handle your product and shipping needs.  You would ship them your product to warehouse.  When you get an order for product, you fax the order to the warehouse.  Their staff would handle everything else.

As far as insurance, you always need insurance.