Home Office to Rented Office?

Good point Zoe, a dedicated room/workshop would potentially be liable for business rates too.

If you work from home you may have to pay business rates on the part of your house that you use for work. You will still have to pay council tax on the rest of the property. Whether your local council charges business rates or not depends on the degree of business use. You are more likely to have to pay business rates if a room is used exclusively for business, or has been modified (eg as a workshop). Each case is considered individually.
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Using your home for business purposes | Business Link

For now I'm going to try and transform my office to something along these lines!
(Photo of Graham Smith's workspace I found on dribbble earlier :))

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Unless you regularly host meetings, need much more space than you have at home, or have a house full of screaming kids, the freelance rented office is a bit of a waste of time and money. Even if you do host meetings, it's not going to look very impressive regardless of how much you spend at Ikea.

I see it like this: you get all the disadvantages of a treadmill workplace - time/cost wasted on travel plus your office rent and services - without the benefits: mainly the social dimension of working amongst a team, your workplace family.

If there's a problem separating work from personal life or not having a structure to your work day, rather than waste time and throw money at the problem, set aside some suitable uncluttered work space at home, apply some self discipline, take breaks and get out of the house, etc.

One of the greatest benefits of freelance and flexible working in the digital age is that many of us can get the work/life balance equation right by choosing where we work and when we work. This is a unique privilege which we should be making more of rather than less.

A sole freelancer renting an office seems like several steps backwards. If you want to join the commuting rat race and work in an office, get a job and become and employee...
 
^ Great post, thanks.

guru24 said:
If there's a problem separating work from personal life or not having a structure to your work day, rather than waste time and throw money at the problem, set aside some suitable uncluttered work space at home, apply some self discipline, take breaks and get out of the house, etc.
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That's where I've let things slip, the work space has begun to merge with home space, need to bring back the division between the two, and as mentioned have more self discipline with breaks and leaving the house from time to time!

Thanks,
Greg
 
One of our customers works from home and the only way he says it works is if he gets up in the morning, gets dressed for work, walks up his local high street has a coffee and then back to his home office. as if he's commuted, seems ridiculous to me but he swears by it! I'd rather have an extra 20mins on snooze myself, maybe give that a go. The commute, not the snooze. :up:

You could even get on a bus and do the whole circuit if you get up early enough, don't forget to claim your travel expenses off yourself. Imagine how pissed off you'd be if you got stuck in a load of traffic and were late in (home)! :D
 
Thanks Tom, I have a commute of sorts as I live at my girlfriends flat which is around 10 minutes away, perhaps I need to start wearing trousers, shirt and shoes to work (parents house)? :D
 
Greg said:
Thanks Tom, I have a commute of sorts as I live at my girlfriends flat which is around 10 minutes away, perhaps I need to start wearing trousers, shirt and shoes to work (parents house)? :D
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yeah, if you're simply just putting your dressing gown on I would definitely suggest at least wearing trousers :D
 
I expect you've already thought of this, but before you take the plunge, check whether there are any restrictions on running a business from the house of your dreams. A lot of builders put clauses in the deeds of new houses prohibiting it and some planners don't like you setting up business in a residential area. You'll also need planning permission to turn part of your house into a business premises (not quite the same if it's just you working from home) but if you want to take on staff and have clients visiting then you would probably need it.

Zoe
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Yep Zoe good point, my brother has run a similar set up for his business for the past few years so shall check how he's gone about it.

I quite fancy getting a dog so walking that in the morning can be my journey to work. :D
 
@Greg. If you live with your girlfriend and use your old room at your parents why not get rid of the home stuff that you have in your room and make it into just an office. Get rid of bed / wardrobe etc. I would just think it might feel like you are going to the office rather than going to work in your old room at your parents.
 
I think whether you work at home or in an office, you'll always end up working at home anyway. When I've worked for an employer I've ALWAYS taken my work home with me so in that aspect I don't think anything would change, even if you wanted it to. I think it's the nature of the beast.

If it's purely for professional reasons, meeting clients etc, then maybe the best thing is to have an office area, but again, you mention you don't meet them much anyway, and it will always come back to the work that you produce for the client in the end. I'm sure they don't mind meeting a designer in a bar or wherever if the work they get is outstanding.

Think it just comes down to budget and personal preference in the end.
 
I think if you could find something like this: Carsonispace - Rent a desk in a fun and creative environment (no longer available) then it'd be worthwhile looking into it (no idea how good a cost that is though)

(So a desk with extra space at an already established creative office)

Otherwise I think you'd be better off trying to find a coworking place (indycube for example) where you go twice a week or something, test the waters so to speak
 
I work from home also and as have 2 other freelancers working for me means office isnt really needed! But am finding not switching off and sometimes working 18 hour days! Pays well but not good!

When i move to South coast going to do a desk share in an office to start with, luckily know the company well as a kite related company but yeah think just the added routine would be better! But still ability to work at home on those days when you cant be bothered to get up at crack of dawn!

Be interested to hear how you get on greg!
 
If i move to south coast then dont want to work from our home so would look at doing an office share somewhere. Know a few people luckily with the space so would be relatively cheap but thats in few months not just yet.
 
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