Moving home office – a home worker’s experience

The perils of moving home office

In a previous guest post freelance copywriter Sophia Moseley shared her recent experiences of house hunting and looking for a new home workspace. Today her story of moving home office continues…

Sophia, do you think you pay a premium for home office space?  If so, how much do you think it adds to the house value in percentage terms?
At the moment, the concept of the ‘home office’ hasn’t yet become part of the remit when people are looking at houses. So agents and landlords haven’t latched onto the benefit of having that extra space that could be utilised as an office or other home work-place, and I don’t think that a ‘premium’ is currently being paid.

However, I have no doubt that as the image of the home office worker improves, any extra space or possibility of conversion/extension will be exploited. That being said, if there is an existing purpose-built area that has appropriate facilities for a home run business, I think the value of the property should increase but only fractionally i.e. it has to be financially worth it compared with working from a conventional office or unit.

Moving house is disruptive enough but moving home office as well must be twice the bother!
As I mentioned in my first post we have moved rather a lot in the past few years, initially by choice because we renovated houses. But following a disastrous property deal, we have found ourselves at the bottom of the property ladder once more and are now renting. Whilst this does have its advantages because it means you are not tied to one place, it also means you are at the whim of the landlord when they want to sell the house, as happened to us! But you are right; it’s not for the faint-hearted!

It must have been quite disruptive to your work having to prioritise what was sorted out first?
I rely heavily on my laptop, pen and notepad, so I was able to perch on a chair right up to the last minute of moving out of the old house! However a home office can be difficult when moving because the priority is to sort out the family essentials first e.g. bedrooms, kitchen & lounge. So I had to occupy the kitchen table once more until I could commandeer the spare bedroom as my own. But once that happened there was no stopping me and I soon had my room sorted with everything close by and accessible. [See photo above].

Have you acquired any interesting stories to tell about properties and/or their owners?
When you rent a house, it’s worth looking closely at the tenancy agreement and if there is something that seems unreasonable, raise it early on in the tenancy. Or when you are planning to leave the property and a previous agreement is no longer reasonable, don’t be afraid to raise the issue with the landlord.

For example, our agreement asked us to ensure the oil tank was full on our departure (it was full when we arrived). We said that a full tank would not make a difference to the saleability of the house, but it would make a big difference to our budget and we asked him to waive this condition. As it happens he refused, but it was worth asking.
 
Also check for any exclusions of operating a business from home. Whilst you may be able to keep it a secret from the landlord, any disgruntled or nosey neighbours will soon spill the beans when delivery vans keep turning up!

Are you on the verge of moving home office? Like Sophia, I’ve done so more often than I wished and my experiences were the basis of a previous post about moving home office.