Timing is everything, especially for doctors starting a new medical practice. Whether you are opening your first clinic following residency, launching your own practice after working as a physician employee, or relocating to a new area, it pays to look before you leap.
In deciding whether it would be best to buy or lease your clinic space, experts say that it’s important to assess where you’re at in your career, how long you plan to remain in the area where you’re starting your business, and to review your personal and professional debt and financial goals.
“…Along with loan repayments, we also want them to follow an investment plan to meet their goals of creating education corpuses for their children and a retirement corpus for themselves.”
-Yogin Sabnis, CFP, managing director at VSK Financial Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, India
Reduce personal debt
If you are intent on purchasing real estate, you should focus on reducing other liabilities such as your home mortgage or other personal debt before securing a loan for clinic space, said Yogin Sabnis, CFP, managing director at VSK Financial Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd. (http://www.vskindia.com/), Mumbai, India, which offers financial planning and asset advisory services.
In addition, before committing to a clinic mortgage (or even a lease), you should review your short-term and long-term financial goals and create a roadmap to achieve them.
“This is because along with loan repayments, we also want them to follow an investment plan to meet their goals of creating education corpuses for their children and a retirement corpus for themselves,” Sabnis said.
Some younger physicians are able to purchase real estate early in their careers because they continue to live in their parents’ home when they start practicing, Sabnis said. This allows them to save more of their income while accumulating less debt.
Supply and demand
Physicians who launch a medical practice in an urban area may be shocked by the high cost of both leasing and buying real estate.
While many physicians would prefer the investment of buying real estate to open their clinic, it may not always be feasible.
Aniruddha Malpani, MD, medical director of the Malpani Infertility Clinic in Mumbai, India, was fortunate when he started out that his parents also were physicians—so he moved his practice into their facility.
“From a financial ROI point of view, buying real estate in a city like Mumbai to start a clinic is not very cost effective,” he said.
Consider leasing in a polyclinic
Malpani recommends that physicians who are staring out consider nontraditional options such as launching their practice in a “polyclinic.” A polyclinic is an office with multiple rooms shared by several doctors who practice in a particular time slot. For example, one doctor may occupy a cabin/consultation room for 2 hours. Then another physician, typically in a complementary (rather than an overlapping) specialty, will see his or her patients for the next 2 hours in the same space.
“This is very common in large cities like Mumbai where space is so expensive,” Malpani said.
A polyclinic arrangement creates an informal group practice arrangement. Advantages of this structure also include faster and more convenient specialist consultations, which...
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