Offices and shops for sale in Tunis

In the governorate of Tunis, buying an office or commercial premises means a completely different market depending on the delegation. In Les Berges du Lac and the Centre Urbain Nord, you buy a floor in an office building. In the city centre, you most often buy a shop that is already let, or an upper-floor flat fitted out as a practice. In the west and south of the capital, you buy the street-facing garage of a multi-storey house, turned into a grocery or a workshop. Buyers, prices and the checks to carry out change from one area to the next.

Many searches for property for sale in Tunis are in fact about this kind of business property: a doctor who wants to stop paying rent, a family company that is expanding, a saver looking for rental income. The listings on this page come from owners, developers and agencies, and you contact the seller directly. Supply varies from week to week, and is larger in the business districts than in the working-class delegations.

Lac, Centre Urbain Nord and Kheireddine Pacha: offices in the strict sense

An office for sale in Tunis in a building designed for that purpose is found mainly in three areas. Les Berges du Lac attract head offices, banks and service companies that want a well-known address and parking. The Centre Urbain Nord is home to IT firms, engineering consultancies and public bodies. Between the two, Avenue Kheireddine Pacha is lined with office buildings from the 2000s, covered in detail on the page of offices and premises for sale in Cité El Khadhra.

These units are sold either bare or fitted out, with partitions, a suspended ceiling and air conditioning, which changes the budget needed to get started. The price per square metre is clearly higher than for a flat in the same neighbourhood, and the gap is justified mostly by parking and shared areas. A buyer who will use the space looks at client access and the possibility of expanding across the landing; an investor looks at how solid the sitting tenant is.

City centre, El Menzah, La Marsa: practices and shops

In the centre, around Avenue Habib Bourguiba, Avenue de Paris and Lafayette, commercial premises for sale in Tunis are often occupied by a shopkeeper who has been there for years. In that case you are buying the walls and a rent, not the use of the premises. The upper floors of Lafayette and Bab El Bhar tend to sell as medical practices or offices for lawyers and accountants.

Further north, El Menzah and El Manar offer villa ground floors converted into practices and shops at the foot of residential buildings. The northern suburbs are a market of their own: in La Marsa, premises on a shopping street near the beach are expensive and rarely come free, as the page of offices and shops for sale in La Marsa shows. Le Kram and La Goulette offer neighbourhood premises and businesses tied to the summer season, with a turnover that varies a great deal between July and January.

The west and the south: neighbourhood premises

In El Hrairia, Ezzouhour, Sidi Hassine, El Ouardia or El Kabaria, shops occupy the ground floor of houses. A unit of 20 to 50 m² on a main road served by buses and shared taxis is worth far more than an identical unit on a back street. Buyers are often local shopkeepers who already rent next door and want to become owners. The page of commercial premises for sale in El Hrairia gives a good picture of this market in Ezzahrouni and the neighbouring areas.

Djebel Djelloud and the area around the Béja road near Le Bardo appeal to a different profile: depots, workshops and hangars for trades that need floor space and lorry access. Prices per square metre are lower there, but municipal approval for the activity matters as much as the location.

Walls, goodwill and lease: what to check

Always distinguish between the sale of the walls and the sale of the business itself. The business covers the customers, the trading name and the right to the lease; the walls cover the premises themselves. These are two deeds and two prices, and a poorly written listing can mix them up. Ask for the land title or the unit's certificate of ownership, the co-ownership rules and the authorised use: a flat converted into an office without a change of use can block an operating licence.

If the premises are let, insist on the registered lease, the payment history and the date of the last rent review. In Tunisia, the commercial lease gives the sitting tenant strong protection, and a buyer who wants to occupy the premises personally needs to know this before signing. To estimate a yield, compare the advertised rent with the offices and shops for rent in Tunis in the same area. Finally, have the structure approved by an accountant: buying in your own name or through the company, registration fees and taxation are not the same.