Offices and shops for rent in La Nouvelle Medina

La Nouvelle Medina is a residential neighbourhood before it is a business district, and its commercial property bears the mark: shops on the ground floor of the Nouvelle Medina 1 and 2 blocks, along the busy streets and around the market, garages converted into warehouses or workshops in Errabta, and almost no offices in the sense of an upper floor suite. The traders who set up here serve the neighbourhood's residents: food, café, pharmacy, hairdressing, private tuition, medical or paramedical practice.

On Houni, the listings for premises to rent in the delegation are few, one or two at a time, and posted by the owners of the premises; you call them directly. For a serious search, you need to look at the same time at Ben Arous town, Megrine, Rades and Mornag, where the business parks and office buildings of southern Tunis are: all the offices and shops to rent in Ben Arous governorate are on a single page.

The ground floors of Nouvelle Medina 1 and 2

The delegation's commerce is concentrated in the numbered sectors, where the blocks were designed with shops below. A unit of 30 to 60 m² on a shopping street, with a metal shutter, a water point and a toilet, is the typical product; it suits a grocery, a phone shop, a salon or a small restaurant. The locations that count are those residents walk through every day: the market axis, the surroundings of the schools, the bus stops to Ben Arous. A unit set back, on a residential street in El Yasminet, lets for far less but lives only on the immediate neighbourhood.

Rents follow the footfall: a small well placed unit usually sits between 500 and 1,000 DT (Tunisian dinars) a month, a secondary unit or a warehouse well below. Professionals, doctors, physiotherapists, accountants, tend instead to rent an S+1 or S+2 apartment on the first floor and convert it into a practice, which requires the owner's written consent and sometimes that of the residents' body; the apartments to rent in La Nouvelle Medina page is then the right starting point.

Warehouses, workshops and garages in Errabta and Sidi Mosbah

In the house sectors, Errabta and Sidi Mosbah, business premises take the form of a garage or a house ground floor let to a craftsman, a carpenter, a mechanic, a wholesaler who needs storage near the Mornag road. These premises are cheap and flexible, but the neighbourhood's designation is residential: check with the municipality that a noisy or traffic-generating activity is tolerated there, and that the premises have an entrance separate from the home. Nuisance is the first cause of conflict with the neighbours, and of early termination of the lease. Count the access time too: a supplier delivering by lorry on a narrow estate street, where residents' cars park on both sides, ends up refusing the round. A garage on a street that opens directly onto the Mornag road is worth more, for a craftsman, than premises twice the size at the back of a neighbourhood of houses.

Commercial lease, key money, fit-out

The commercial lease protects a tenant who has been trading for at least two years under a written contract, and landlords know it: some offer short contracts or so-called professional leases to avoid automatic renewal. Read how the lease is classified before signing, and have it registered. Clarify who takes on the three-phase electricity, the meter, the shopfront, the drainage; in new premises delivered as a shell, the works fall to the tenant and must be amortised over the term of the lease.

Key money may be asked for the busiest locations; it is not systematic in the delegation and is negotiable. If you would rather buy the premises than rent them, the offices and shops for sale in La Nouvelle Medina page presents the few commercial units put up for sale in the neighbourhood.