Home too small, can't move. Could renting an office be the answer?

[Duv]

We have 2 adults and one toddler sharing a small two bed home, and we would like to have more children.

For various reasons it looks like we are unlikely to be able to move anytime soon so trying to think of ways to make it work. One of the reasons our home feels so small is we both WFH frequently, and that means we have desk and monitor space that currently takes up a lot of our child's bedroom.

It's just about worked so far because our kid is still in a cot and doesn't use her bedroom as a play space (it's not currently safe to do so because of the office stuff) - but this won't work long term, and certainly not if we have another kid.

I looked up renting costs for small private office space and they were surprisingly low in my area. We could presumably move some of our storage (bookshelves and such) to an office to make more space at home?? So use it as both work space and storage? Has anyone done such a thing? It feels like it's a lot cheaper to rent a small office room than it is to get an extra bedroom dedicated to being a home office so wondering why more people don't do this?

Good idea.

Do you have space in the garden for a shed/office? Much cheaper than renting and you can build it yourself to save costs if you have the skills

The reason you haven't heard of anyone doing this op is likely because most commercial leases don't permit it.
Commercial buildings are zoned and designed for business activities, not for residential.
Although from your situation, WFH , I can see why you'd think it would be perfect for you and your family.

Surely if you need to rent a space to work from home, you'd just go to the office and use the space that the business you work for is paying for?

But they would be using it as office space. Not residential.

Sounds a great idea and might also help with work life balance and not letting either work or home overspill into the other area

Work location could be miles away though.

I think its a good idea.

You have to factor in the loss of the benefits of working from home, i.e. no longer able to cook, laundry, clean the house, etc., around the working day, inconvenience of the commute, being away from home for deliveries/workmen, etc.

Also, it's lost money every month, whereas if you bought a bigger house or extended your current one, you'd have an appreciating asset that would make money over the years you're living there.

I did similar a rented a small office at first, after working from home, which was just a few miles away, but it was a pain to lose the benefits of working from home, and paying rent every month is dead money. After a couple of years, I found a small office to buy very close to home, (within walking distance) which I've been working from over 20 years now, and it's increased in value very nicely over that time, so I'm sitting on a nice capital gain, and not had any rent to pay. It doubles as surplus household storage and we also use it partly as a hobby room.

If you have space in your garden you could something like this in it:

https://remotepods.co.uk/products/remote-pod?variant=45109425209608&country=GB&currency=GBP&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&srsltid=AfmBOooXNWuiZGpZ_NPzUxu6l-lzOkeG07HBBqMIBe97rCDmM5C-Bf_F06A

Or you could get your loft boarded out and a velux put in? My friend has done this and created office space relatively cheaply.