Renting Will Cost You
In 2013, the US national average for office space was roughly $23.23 per square foot. That’s quite a bit. For a 500 square-foot office—or something the size of a one person apartment—you’re looking at $11,615. In a year, that comes to $139,380. You could build an office several times over at the same rate.
Well, if you go the prefabricated route. Now a residential home will average at about $150 per square foot, or about 6.45 times the cost for rent at the national average. This means in 6.45 years, if you just built a house it would have paid for itself in rent savings.
But if you really want to save, you need to consolidate expenses even greater. After all, there’s no real need to have all the amenities of a traditional home in an office. To that end, you may consider the prefabricated route. You’ll find many estimates online, but generally you can expect to spend $16 to $100 per square foot.
This means a 2,000 square-foot facility is going to cost you between $32,000 and $200,000. Now that’s $100,000 less than building a house using traditional methods, so you’ve already got a minimum savings of 33% going this method, and a maximum savings of roughly 89%.
Either way, you’ll end up saving more this way. As a small-business owner looking to operate an office from their own living arrangements, this makes a lot of sense. You can install an office in the backyard that is its own separate entity, and do so more cost-effectively than renting from a building downtown.
Curtailing Costs and Obtaining Independence
Certainly you could outfit your garage for the same purpose, though it won’t have the same professional veneer. Still, it could be a surrogate office while you get your primary office built. At 500 square feet, your office would cost between $8,000 and $50,000 to build.
If you want to be totally “off the grid” with it, you can install solar and wind energy with more than enough to meet your general needs for about $10,000. That’s: $5k for roughly 5 kWh (kilowatt hours) every hour, and roughly $5k for about the same energy through wind—depending on your area, of course.
Regarding prefabricated structures, on their website FidelitySteel.com, Fidelity Steel points out that such construction offers: “…a faster approach…it also offers simpler foundation designs, so your projects go up in no time. If you need more space in a hurry, this is a great option. Plus, there are still several designs to choose from.”
Today’s financial environment is hard on business. Changes in government administration are saying they will usher in tax breaks for business, but until those hit the market, they have a largely theoretical quality to them. In the meantime, things like property tax, benefits tax, and increased brackets all apply.
Take Every Advantage You Can
You’ve got to pinch every penny possible—twice if you can get away with it. All jokes aside, consolidation of expenses and efficiency of operations are absolutely integral to profitability and ultimate financial sustainability over time. You need to cut as many costs as possible.
Building sustainably can remove the cost of utilities. It can also remove the cost of rent, and help diminish the impact taxes have on your operation. Additionally, you have better control over your business when you own the building out of which it operates. Finally, the value of the building itself becomes a collateral asset which can be used in the worst-case scenario to source additional capital.
