New Construction Ins and Outs?

[Ian Turner]

New to the site, new to laundromats (hopefully?!). I live in a small city of about 5,000 with next to no laundromats in town. We have a major tourism crowd which triples our population from April – October, most of which are here for boating, fishing, camping, and site seeing. No existing facilities means an opportunity to build one!

I’ve identified a couple possible locations and am looking at something like a 1,000 SF facility. I’m experienced in real estate investing, construction, etc and recognize that a laundry business is just that, a business, but I’m very interesting in meeting this demand IF its a good fit. Anyway, all help with my education and due diligence is greatly appreciated.

Can anyone link me to a forum regarding new construction? My goal is to automate as much as possible. Durable materials, good lighting/visibility from the street to minimize vandalism, new/newer machines, etc. Ideally I would have someone check the machines, pull quarters, and clean the floors is about it. Is that realistic?

Any recommendations on projecting income potential for a new facility? What about equipment size, quality, quantity, maintenance? Being rather remote/rural, I would either lean on my local HVAC contractor or perform maintenance myself.

Bottom line is that I’m interested in this field but may be very naive about the ins and outs. Please feel free to throw darts at my ideas, maybe answer a few questions, and hopefully ASK even more!

Thank you in advance for any insight you can provide.

Ian

[Yale Kendall]

In my current search for an existing laundromat, 2000 sq ft is too small.

[Ian Turner]

Interesting. What makes it too small? What’s the balance between smaller with CONSTANT machine use versus bigger, with more equipment, but more availability? I’m thinking something like 10 sets of w/d but don’t know if that’s enough to cash flow or if it will even fit in 1000sf?
Thanks!

[Jason Dodge]

I think you need to reach out and talk to a laundromat distributor in your area. You also need to make sure the building can become a laundromat. Buildings with basements don’t make great laundromats. Construction costs for laundromats are expensive, so are equipment costs. Can you make enough money in 7 months to cover the other 5 months when the population is low?

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