Bruce Toback writes:

>  Wirt Atmar writes:
>
>  >A house is intrinsically more comfortable than an office building. If you
>  >have no walk-in customers and have no need of putting up a store-front
>  >facade, buying a house on a 10-year mortgage is not only a far better
>  >investment than paying office rent, it's much quieter, more pleasant to
>  >work
>  >in, and allows people to work longer hours, at their leisure. We
currently
>  >work out of two adjacent 70-year-old houses in the Alameda Historical
>  >District in Las Cruces, NM (and we are preparing to move into a third,
and
>  >possibly a fourth adjacent house this summer).
>
>  This is a fascinating idea, and I wondered "why didn't we do that?" I
>  then remembered:
>
>  1. Houses are hard to find in non-residential areas, and most
>  municipalities won't let you run a business with non-family employees (or
>  with more than one or two non-family employees) in residential areas. In
>  fact, we considered building a 600-700 square-foot guest house on our
>  existing property for an office, but ran into the business restrictions.
>  We also considered buying one vacant lot in our neighborhood and building
>  a house to use as an office, but were stymied by the regulations -- even
>  though the lot had a major thoroughfare on one side and a shopping center
>  in back.
>
>  What is the situation in Las Cruces? Do you have a way of getting these
>  restrictions lifted/waived in certain situations? If you're in a
>  residential area, do you ever get complaints from the neighbors?

Zoning is always a problem, and not only to small companies that wish to work
out of houses. Some years back, HP had significant problems with their prior
office in Albuquerque simply because it was nestled up next to housing -- but
was otherwise on a major thoroughfare in Albuquerque. If I remember
correctly, HP had to abandon a portion of their driveway so as to avoid
traffic next to the houses.

However, we've been very lucky -- in part I suspect because we've been very
sensitive to zoning problems. We approach the description of what we do more
as authors than as manufacturers, which is essentially the truth. Indeed, I
don't know if you could easily tell anymore the difference between a literary
author and a software author by their machinery -- except for perhaps the 25
phone lines we have coming into the main house. Moreover, we've gotten to
know all of our neighbors very well. They've all become good friends -- and
they all know what we do.

Further, we've been very restrictive about having customers come to any of
the locations. There are 10 HP3000s in Las Cruces and QueryCalc is on 9 of
them. Even with this 90% market penetration (which is what we're aiming for
world-wide :-), only two of our local customers have ever been to our
facilities.

And, as I mentioned earlier, we're in a historical district. Indeed, three of
the houses face Las Cruces Avenue, which was 100 years ago, the main entrance
into Las Cruces. The avenue runs between the train station and downtown. The
city fathers a century ago wanted Las Cruces Avenue to be a broad, tree-lined
lane for the horse-drawn carriages to travel, providing the very best
possible first-impression for newcomers to the city, thus the city created a
parkway on both sides of the street. Our part of that parkway is a portion of
the now-widely-celebrated, world-famous lawn that we mow.

When we first moved here, the area was deteriorating, but I didn't think that
phase would last. And I've been pleasantly proven to be correct in that
guess. The problem at the time was, that for almost all of the houses in the
area, only one or two families had ever lived in the houses since their
original construction -- and the men of the families had long ago passed
away. It was a neighborhood of widows when we first moved in. Unfortunately,
most of these very fine ladies have also now passed away. One of the last,
Mrs. Barnhill, a directly across-the-street neighbor just passed away a few
months ago. She was 108.

Nor were there any children in the neighborhood when we first moved here. But
the street is now filled with them. And the people who have moved in are
actively investing and repairing the houses. Surprisingly little actual
repair is necessary. The houses are extremely well built. Most of the
problems are simply paint, electrical, plumbing, and such -- not structural.

Moreover, the city is re-investing in the area. The city is in the process of
spending a quarter-million dollars in a first phase to refurbish the train
depot and the city has just placed 100% genuine imitation gas-lights up and
down the street.

Even though we're in a neighborhood now filled with families, Dun &
Bradstreet lists us as owning 5500 sq. ft. of office space in the central
business district of Las Cruces -- I presume because we're on Las Cruces
Avenue and only five blocks from the city center.

>  Phoenix has some houses in non-residential areas, but they're mostly
>  downtown, a 15-mile commute. (I hear snickers from the readers in the SF
>  Bay area :-).) They're also very expensive, having been "gentrified" and
>  bought as investment property. When we were in business in California, we
>  found the perfect house for a business. But it was $350,000 so we'd have
>  had to lease out part of it, and I didn't fancy being a landlord while
>  trying to start a software business :-).

My commute, unfortunately, is only 30 feet, which leads to very little
exercise. Indeed, I leave the area so rarely that one time a group of kids
who essentially lived with us from 3 in the afternoon to 9 at night when
their parents came home once started howling and yelling when we got into one
of our cars and I put the key into the ignition. I couldn't imagine what was
wrong. It wound up that they didn't think that I knew how to drive -- simply
because in three years, they'd never seen me go anywhere in a car.


>  2. Sometimes a storefront is needed "just because." When we looked into
>  taking credit cards while we worked out of a home, we were told that a
>  storefront was a requirement.
>  Have you encountered this? If so, how did you deal with it?

Yes, we encountered the problem. It came as a real surprise to me when we
were told that we couldn't get a credit card machine without having a store
front. But the reason isn't what you might think -- and we were lucky enough
to have someone explain it to us rather than just mindlessly enforcing the
rule. That rule is in place apparently to discourage bordellos from operating
out of houses, disguised as "massage parlors" or "hypnotherapists."

An officer from Norwest Bank had to come to inspect our facilities in order
for us to get credit card capabilities. It took him only a few minutes to
decide that we were indeed a legitimate business. And then he stayed for a
couple of hours, just to talk about what we did and who our customers are. He
was surprised that he had never heard of us -- but, as I say, we keep a very
low profile (we even operate the business with unlisted phone numbers).


>  3. Do you have any concerns about weekend security?

All of the buildings are wired with security alarms that automatically dial
the police. And because we're only a few blocks from City Hall, we get
unbelievably good service. The few times that the alarms have been
accidentally tripped, the police have been here in two or three minutes.

>  I love the idea. There are environmental advantages as well, since small
>  offices in residential areas can reduce or eliminate automobile
>  commuting.

Please see comments above about lack of exercise and people not believing
that you know how to drive :-).

>
>  -- Bruce

Wirt