In Australia a Tennant doesn’t pay any property or council taxes, those are included in the rent and the land lord pays them (usually water is also included). I guess the rent is a bit higher because it’s dual use but it’s still cheaper than renting and office and an apartment with the same total space.
Small time … we want a 150% refundable tax credit for this improvement … not only have the tax-payers pay for everything, but also throw in a bit of margins for the landlord … when the legislature isn’t in session, we definitely want our landlord off to Hawai’i or Monaco … 'cause if he walks in a sees all the bunk beds and video game equipment set up in the back store room, he’s going to be pissed … never mind the three weeks worth of dirty dishes piled up in the break room …
I still can’t believe we hauled all that topsoil up to the roof for our little garden … there’ll be hell to pay for that someday …
I’m trying to figure this out: there’s what looks like an office storefront in a nearby shopping center – it’s a tax prep place – which, as far as I can tell, of course doesn’t have a stove. And it’s right next to the comic-book shop I frequent, which has comics on the shelves along with t-shirts and keychains – and, again, no stove.
But also right next door to that shop, on the other side, is a Subway; and they bake bread and cookies there, right? And they have commercial-strength refrigeration in place, for the meats and the veggies and so on? And as you continue on down that shopping center, there’s – well, a barbershop, which presumably has no oven; and a bakery, which presumably has one? And there’s a shoe store, which seems ovenless; and there’s an Italian restaurant, which is ovenful?
And I’m guessing most folks reading this – well, you probably don’t live in my town, but I’m guessing you have a shopping center with the same mélange of commercial properties side-by-side? Like, office-type ones where maybe there’s a break room with a fridge and a microwave, and food-prep ones where more is going on?
If we’re building a retail shop and know Claire’s will be leasing from us, then we’re not going to spend all the extra money on wiring suitable for a Subway shop … when Claire’s shuts down and we then lease to Subway, in go the electricians and they make it suitable for the Subway shop … when Subway shuts down we’ll lease to Jack’s Custom Welding Center and even more electricians go in … ISIS comes next and they’ll need cyclotrons …
Well, what about the other way around? If a Subway shop shuts down and the property then gets leased by a Claire’s, do electricians go in to nerf the wiring?
Probably not … and only what is necessary to provide for Claire’s needs … just simply throw the 220 breakers and everything should be safe … well, as safe as a Claire’s shop can be …
All I can contribute to this thread is that from what I have seen, commercial electrical wiring standards tend to be more strict than those for residences. Same for things like fire sprinklers.
No, what we have here is a fundamental corruption in the zoning laws. If mixed residential/commercial use was the primary zones allowed (with perhaps a little bit of pure residential around the edges), the cost per square foot of office rent would equal the cost per square foot of residential rent. Since if it didn’t equal out, landlords would switch their properties to whichever type garnered higher rents. But instead we have the current corrupt situation.
Another issue is the laws have all these restrictions on the minimum size of a residence, etc. So years of these laws have created these situations, where it in fact is cost effective to rent an office and sleep in the back.
As for things like showers and hot plates - well, with all that money you saved on rent, you could spend $15 every single day eating out and still come out pretty far ahead…
Well, you’re not supposed to, but you could probably do it and not get caught. Or even if the landlord DID catch you, they might not care.
But no, commercially leased structures for the purpose of doing business are not meant to be residential dwellings. This is why they have those pesky things called Zoning Laws.
Besides, I doubt that any decent commercial property would be that much–if any–cheaper than a residential dwelling. Hell, where I live…which, granted, is a fast-growing and vibrant large city in Texas…commercial real estate is 90% occupied and anything other than in “the 'hood” that’s over, say, 600 sf is gonna cost several thousand bucks a month.
And then there’s the matter of amenities like showers and kitchens and such. This could be provided in a commercial space zoned and built for a restaurant, of course, but then you’re really talking some big bucks.
Another pricing factor is that apartments can have tenants skip out with rent owed, or before the lease ends, or with damage done to the apartment. This is much less common in office space, so commercial landlords seldom have to include extra in the rent to cover such losses, while it’s routine for residential landlords. So this tends to keep commercial rents lower.
I share an office with a coworker at an Air Force Base.
We have a small microwave oven in our office. It was setting on a chair. A safety inspector came by and said it was a safety hazard for a microwave oven to be on a chair. So we put it on the floor, which is carpeted. Another inspector came by and said we couldn’t set the oven on carpet. So we put a piece of sheet metal between the oven and carpet.
So if you stop by our office to use our oven - which many people do - you are are forced to perform squat exercises. 
Would like to get a metal stand, obviously. But I’m not sure if we can buy one with contract money.
Ya never know.
I work in a fairly new building. Built in 1997.
Our departments office space has 4 people in it. ‘Private’ cubes. It’s set up for 8 and still have open/meeting space, so it’s a large area for us.
Three of us are on the same circuit. I have two computers, and a small dorm sized fridge. The others have their various computers and chargers. And in winter, space heaters.
If I add a space heater, we trip the breaker. No surprise really I suppose.
This is the dilemma I came to … what exactly is the problem with living in a commercial rental unit? … perhaps there’s a higher fire danger, but commercial building code is far stricter in commercial buildings than residential … sanitation facilities are included in most commercial office buildings … everything else I could think of, and everything I’ve read in this thread, lead me to believe it’s all trivial …
So … who wins by having this restriction on living in commercial rental units? …
Landlords get twice the money on rents … I can’t think of anyone else who wins here …
Correct. This is the same reason why higher density residential gets disallowed or impeded in courts for years or charged ridiculous additional taxes that lower density residential doesn’t have to pay. The fundamental reason there isn’t affordable housing in many desirable cities to live in are obstructionist laws by the city’s government. (I think the fix should be to take over at the Federal level, like the government of Japan does it, because obstructing the creation of new dwellings is impeding the flow of interstate commerce)
I worked for a while as a commercial electrician. Usually the company leasing is responsible for any change overs they want. The landlords responsibilities are usually very limited. In new mall spaces they’d supply, fire systems, HVAC systems, a roof that doesn’t leak, and a feeder circuit. Everything else was the tenants issue. Sometimes the landlord would provide the panels and a step down transformer. It was much less expensive for the tenant to move into a existing space than to move into new construction, because the previous tenant would have paid for much of the electrical.
We added and removed wiring as needed. If circuits could stay in place we’d just cap them off as needed. Drop ceilings are very common in commercial spaces, a lot of times unneeded circuits get pulled above the ceiling.
Sometimes we’d go into a space and have everything we needed, other times we’d have to run a bunch of new circuits.
I’m as cynical as the next guy – heck, usually more cynical than the next guy – but if the only reason we’re discussing this is because it’d cost less to rent an office than to rent an apartment, isn’t it possible the city government encourages sweetheart deals in hopes of wholesomely incentivizing business undertakings?
Say you rent a storefront to a guy who has a plan for bringing in taxable revenue; and maybe he hires an out-of-work local to lend a hand, and maybe he starts running ads in the city newspaper, and so on – but every “maybe” is all just icing on the cake of that entrepreneur setting up shop and receiving money for stuff and agreeing to cut the community in on a piece of every transaction, right?
And so you offer a low low price on a fine place to do business, and you wait for the benefits to Our Fair City to start rolling in, and – sonofabitch, is he just sleeping? That wasn’t the plan! Here I was, hoping that folks would come from out of town to patronize this guy’s business,and maybe patronize other business while they’re here; and it turns out his whole plan tops out at “drinks beer” and “watches porn”.
This starts with minimal habitability requirements … to comply the landlord must set a minimal rent … for which some segment of the population cannot afford and become homeless … my first son was born in a tobacco shed because that’s where we were living … no electric, no plumbing, had to dig our own outhouse … it was cheap, literally dirt cheap … and that’s fine up some remote haller in Western Carolina … suburban Cincinnati, not so much …
Supply and demand … why does a two-bedroom bungalow in the North Park neighborhood of San Diego rent fro $3,200 a month … because someone will pay that much … if someone can’t afford that, then they can’t live in San Diego … move to LA … the solution is build more houses … “Pave paradise and put up a parking lot” …
Would you clean out your unused tool shed out back and rent it to a homeless family for $50 a month … that’s a win-win situation … but is it lawful where you live … if not, then you have a chronic homelessness problem …
Great point The Other Waldo Pepper, I didn’t even think of that … business taxes is what funds city services in your basic cheapskate State or Nation …
Perhaps the extra taxes on Residential spaces is justified because a family can be more expensive to the city than some sort of office/small store. I mean, the business might add a few cars to the traffic flow, and if they’re in some sort of food service they probably use more water.
But the family might have four kids in need of school rooms and teachers and bus transport.
Which do you think costs a city more to provide?
That argument doesn’t hold a drop of water. The physical materials and labor to make a basic habitable space cost almost nothing. Residential zoning requirements in the US go way beyond “4 walls, a roof that doesn’t leak, and a toilet that flushes, and a sink”. They specify how big the yard has to be (generally you are forced, by law, to waste land on the front and back yards), the minimum size, the minimum amount of parking, the minimum value for a given area, and so on and so forth. This drives up the amount of land you have to take up (which is what is the expensive part) enormously. It has the effect of making the existing homeowner’s and landlords properties more valuable - which they often are counting on - and so the local corrupt city politicians get reelected, and the cycle continues.
Here’s an example of a country where national laws properly set up residential zoning. Note that all higher density zones are mixed use. Note that neighbors get no say about demolish/rebuilds - very little of this ‘historically significant, changes the character of the neighborhood’ bullshit.
This is an interesting question. There’s a building for sale along my way to work that’s 3 office spaces on the bottom floor and an apartment on the top floor. It has sat empty for over a year in a tight real estate market, and I know it’s cheaper than many houses in the area. I wonder what’s stopping someone from making the whole thing their house after a renovation given the apartment means it has the right zoning for a residence.
The town where my warehouse is has a law in place that says ‘a commercial property must be vacant for 2 years before the owner can apply to re-zone the property to residential.’
The property tax is significantly higher in commercial properties over residential. It is quite discouraging for a property owner to forgo rental income on a property while paying the expensive taxes for two years.