At Home Offices

woodmagman

I have an office/shop and show room. But my belief is that if it was not for the shop, I would not have gone further then my own basement or put on an addition to house the requirement for my business. Walk ins, in the renovation business are next to none for us. Setting up appointments for a person to come to my home office, providing it is allowed by manner of correct permitting. It would be just as professional as a store front or office.
Heck we put home offices in people houses fairly regularly....It makes a lot of thing tax deductible. Lawn maintenance the fourth bath, the hot tub, loffa expenses and even firewood to show off that new log burner in the back yard....
I am in my home office more then the other anyway....

Teetorbilt

I also have a home office and a shop/office. The home office is private and I don't have customers traipsing through it. Ol'#2 keeps an office here too. We enjoy the writeoffs but deal with customers at their homes or places of business.

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Floordude

I have a home office, and my garage is my warehouse, all tax deductable!! Taking the % of the home used, that % of the bills is then a write-off.

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copusbuilder

Home office for us also. Makes a nooner a lot easier

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woodmagman

Nooner...? is that like a pizza.

daArch

Love the juxtaposition of this thread and
Making the mover from home office to renting a space.

Just shows that different needs call for different solutions.

As I psoted in that thread, I think the impact on the neighborhood should be considered. Foot and vehicle traffic in and out, number of vehicles parked, storage of materials & equipment, noise, dust, odors, etc. etc, can, even at a level you think minimal, bother the neighbors. And THAT'S not good for business.

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copusbuilder

Not quite sure? I have only heard about them

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copusbuilder

This is true. Mt last house had an outbuilding we used for an office. My business grew and guys would hang outside waiting for job orders. It had a negative impact on the neighborhood.
Clogging the street and guys drinking coffee in the morning.
A smaller size should be no problem!

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woodmagman

Your right, you need to find out what your area requires to operate a buisness from home. In mine I could have a home office and have no more then one customer per day coming to it. The shop is the thing that can kill the home idea thing. Noise, trucks coming and going with product delivery and at the very least the fact that combustibles like wood finishes are being stored there makes it a big NO NO. If the home office is designed to have the customer come and not impact the neighbors or your own life, it is the way to go....If you request that they come by appointment only, and park in your driveway and use a specific enterance. You will have no problems...

woodmagman

I can see a group of coffee drinkers being a problem at 7 in the morning...All those husbands and working moms leaving for work, bumping into unshaven tradesman on the sidewalk. It would be like living next to a job site. The job meeting would need to be held at the site or over breakfast at the local diner.
I have a meeting every two weeks at the shop, other then that they had better be on site working. We use to meet for breakfast prior to that. If you are handing out work orders that can be done at the site the afternoon before..

Giovanni

I used to have an office at home, the great thing is commute = 0. The downside was that you're always at work and there's no limit to what you could be doing for your business.

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woodmagman

You could put on you over coat and take your umbrella for a two second walk from the front door of your home to the rear enterance of your office.. No traffic and if timed correctly you could avoid the water cooler type talk with your neighbor.

Grumpy

MY personal belief is that every legitimate business needs a place of business. I often invite customers to come to my office, just having an office sometimes wow's them when everyone else is working out of a basement or garage.

Personally though I don't see how anyone can grow past a one man show working in his basement. I mean how can you even attract quality employees working in a basement? How many salesmen and secretaries do you think will see job security in your basement?

We argue this topic, what every 3-4 months or so?

woodmagman

Your right Grump, You will grow out of your office. The location is not the issue when that happens. It is the size or zoning.......I know that some of my client from the past run very successful business such as film production, recording studios, internet developers, theropy, childcare, candy manufacter, photograph studio some in the hundreds of dollars per day and some in the thousands. It depends on the circumstance and business.
This is 2007, if you do not require walk in business, your phones can be very professionally anwered anywhere in the world, your bookkeeping can be done at your bookkeeper home office, your sales staff should not be sitting at their desks waiting for calls to come in, they can maintain a home office themselves if they want to do that and wear out their own chairs. Offices can be a place for people to go and look busy while really not getting anything done anyway.
The definition of a legitimate business would be the exchange of funds for a legal service. To say that because they are not operating an office in the traditional format would make a huge share of the home office companies non-legitimate. For almost every contractor out there the statement would disparage their pride of what they do and what makes them competitive.
I know most readers of these posts are one of two contractors, reading it from their home office or “crap I have been caught” reading from the comfort of their bosses supplied chair.

Grumpy

I stand by my words as I have had this argument many many many times before in this very forum. If you do a search you will see you are not the first person to convince me that I am wrong, yet I still stand by my words.

I know my opinions tend to isolate me from many people, but that's ok with me. I am a passionate person and passionate about my beliefs, I belive many of my opinions to be fact and don't speak casually. There is a method to my madness and a reasoning for my opinions as stated above.

woodmagman

LOL, your perception of what you believe others think, set you apart from other people. The isolation is self induced...... You need to get out of your shell and voice you real thoughts....LOL I tried that Isolation thread and voicing my opion and got not takers....

Chris Johnson

Keep in mind the tax implications of a home office, especially in Canada, you are writing off a portion of the house to business, be prepared to pay the capital gains when you sell.

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woodmagman

You are required to pay capital gains I believe if you sell you primary residence sooner then one year of residency...so a home a year or something like that but I am not a tax man and could be way out to lunch....but I think I right.

RenaissanceR

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Grumpy

Voice my real thoughts? Are you serious? As if there is any advantage to lieing to a bunch of strangers over the internet. Seriously the anonymnity of the Internet sets me free, and allows me to voice my real thoughts uncensored and unbiased with no fear of what others think.

In the real world everything is greeted with a smile and a nod regardless of what's really going on in my head.