A little over a year ago we made the move to commercial office space. I had been in a home office for several years and wanted the visability and a place to meet clients that wasn't offered in a home office setting.

Sure, a home office did offer a number of advantages; ability to work at any time, very little overhead and a tax deduction, but it had a number of drawbacks as well. Let's look at the pros and cons.

Pros to a home office:

• Cheap, no rent
• No dress code
• No commute
• No one is looking over your shoulder

Cons to a home office:

• Familiar surroundings may cause you to become distracted doing "home things"
• Need to be more disciplined. No one to watch over your shoulder. The responsibility is yours.
• Feeling "out of touch" due to lack of contact with other workers
• Interruptions of time from kids, spouse or other priorities from home not normally addressed in the workplace.
• Inability to "let go" of work tasks, because you're never far away.
• More difficult to arrange meetings and have clients "drop by the office"

Obviously, having a home office isn't for everyone. Flexibility is key. We wanted to have clients stop by to meet us to talk about their loan situations and that wasn't going to be possible in a home office enviornment. You simply need to determine what is most important to you and what kind of image you're looking to project.