How to rent out warehouse space in Lahore to a self storage partner

If you own a godown in Badami Bagh, a shed off Multan Road or a half empty building in one of the industrial estates, and you've been wondering how to rent out warehouse space in Lahore without chasing tenants every few months, this is written for you. We run self storage for households in Lahore, and we're building a network of partner buildings for the times our own space isn't enough. Here's what we look for, what suits us, and what doesn't.

Not every godown is a fit, and we'd rather you knew that before the paperwork.

Lahore's godown stock, and where it sits

Lahore has a lot of storage space, but it's spread across very different kinds of building. The kind you own decides most of what follows.

The old trade godowns

Badami Bagh and the Shahdara side of the Ravi hold some of the city's oldest godowns. They were built for trade stock: grain, hardware, auto parts, bales. Many have thick walls and good shutters. Many also sit in lanes where a Mazda truck can barely get in, let alone turn. A good one here can work well. A tired one usually can't.

The industrial estates

Sundar Industrial Estate and Quaid e Azam Industrial Estate near Kot Lakhpat have proper factory sheds, wider roads and plots laid out for lorries. Some owners have a bay or a whole shed they no longer use because a line moved or an order book shrank. That kind of space, covered, dry and with room to back a vehicle in, is close to ideal for us.

The road corridors

Multan Road, Ferozepur Road and Raiwind Road are lined with warehouses, sheds and mixed buildings of every age. Some are newer and well built, with high ceilings and clear access from the main road. Others are a shutter on a ground floor with a family living above. Both can qualify. What matters is the condition and the security, not the postcode.

Why household storage suits a godown owner

Most godown owners in Lahore let space to traders on short arrangements. A wholesaler needs room for a season, fills it, empties it, and leaves. You're always looking for the next one, and the months in between earn nothing. Our customers behave very differently.

The biggest group we store for is families leaving the country. A two year contract in the Gulf, study in the UK, a move to Canada with a return date nobody can promise. Their furniture goes in once and stays put for six months to two years. Nobody needs a forklift every Tuesday. Nobody's lorry blocks your lane every morning. The goods sit, quietly, and the space earns every month.

That's the case for long stays: a steady, predictable occupancy beats a higher headline rate that's empty a third of the year. When you work out what to ask us, think about what a vacant month really costs you, not just what the best month earned.

What we bring, and what we ask

The point of partnering with us is that you don't have to find customers. We run the advertising, the search listings and the quoting. By the time a customer reaches your building, they're already priced and booked.

• One counterparty. We hold the agreement with each customer. You invoice us monthly for the space our goods occupy, and the collection risk is ours, not yours.
• No exclusivity. Keep your own customers and your own trade lets. We only ask that once a customer's goods are in, that space stays theirs for the agreed term.
• Long stays. As above. The furniture doesn't move until the family comes back or sends for it.

In Lahore we run our own building, so we take partner space for two reasons: premium requirements our building doesn't cover, and peak months when our own floor runs short. The full arrangement is set out on the storage partner programme page.

What it takes to rent out warehouse space in Lahore with us

Most of what we store is wooden furniture and upholstery. Sofas, beds, wardrobes, dining sets, mattresses. That decides the standard. Wood swells in damp and cracks in heat, fabric draws termites and mould, and a single monsoon leak can ruin a family's whole house worth of goods. So these are hard requirements, not preferences.

The access rule matters more than people think. It's the same promise we make to our own customers, so we can't accept less from a partner. If a family's brother turns up on a Sunday to collect a cot, someone has to open the shutter.

We go into the security side in much more detail in our guide to storage facility security standards.

Things that help but won't decide it

None of these is a reason to say no on its own. Each one makes a building easier to use and easier to fill.

• Gated entry, so vehicles wait inside rather than on the road
• Fire detection and extinguishers that have actually been serviced
• Separate lockable units, or open covered floor we can bay off ourselves
• Clear ceiling height, and racking if you have it
• Ground floor access, or a lift that takes a wardrobe
• Hard standing and room for a trailer to turn
• A loading dock or ramp, labour on site, and power backup for the cameras when the grid drops

What won't work, said plainly

We'd rather lose an application than put a family's furniture somewhere it'll be damaged. These are the buildings we turn down:

• Cold stores. We don't offer cold storage and don't want it, so a chilled building isn't a fit even if it's spotless.
• Shared floors with hazardous stock. If the next bay holds chemicals, fuel, paint drums or food stock, our goods can't go beside it.
• Basements that take water. Some older Lahore buildings flood at the first heavy rain. If yours does, it's out until it's fixed.
• Buildings we can't get a vehicle to. If the lane is so narrow a loaded truck can't reach the shutter, every collection becomes a carrying job down a street, and that's not fair on the customer.

If you've also got a factory with a line that's gone quiet, read our piece on renting out unused factory space. The standard is the same but the questions are a little different.

How to think about your rate

We negotiate rates facility by facility, so we won't put a figure here. What we will tell you is how to think about it.

Price per square foot per month, for the space our goods actually occupy. Decide what's included: is the guard's wage in it, the fumigation, the electricity for the cameras? If you'd charge separately for labour on collection days, say so up front. Then set out your terms: deposit, minimum term, notice period and any handling charges.

Give us your real rate. We add our own margin before a customer ever sees a price, so quoting high doesn't win you anything. It just makes your building the expensive option, and the space sits empty while a cheaper one fills.

How applying works

1. Four fields. Name, phone, city and the kind of space you have. It takes under a minute.
2. The dossier. Address and map pin, the space (units, open or covered area, ceiling height), security, your rate per square foot and your terms, at least five photos from our shot list, and a short declaration that the photos are real.
3. A phone call to go through it together.
4. A visit. Someone walks the building. Nothing is agreed before this.
5. Rates and terms in writing, signed by both sides.
6. One or two customers first, then steady flow once both sides are happy.

The shot list is specific: the street outside with your signage, the entrance or gate, a view down the inside of the floor, the units or bays, the camera positions and the recorder, and the roof or ceiling. The whole process is explained in how a storage partnership works.

Approved partners may be listed on our Lahore page, and some may be featured elsewhere on the site. That's our decision after approval, not automatic, and we never publish a partner's exact address or phone number.

Got a dry, secure godown? Start here

If your building is covered, dry, watched round the clock and reachable by a truck, it's worth the minute it takes to tell us about it. A steady tenant on long household stays is a different kind of rental income from trade lets, and for the right godown it's a better one. Start your application with the four fields, and we'll take it from there.