I followed up on the virtual office talked about in the article I linked to in the last post. Here in Baltimore you can get a virtual office that gives you only a mailing address for 75.00 a month. Hey, anyone ever hear of a post office box? For $200.00 a month you get the mailing address and someone to answer and forward your calls. Okay, that might be good. I don’t know how much an answering service costs, but for 200.00 a month you get the receptionist during business hours only. For $300.00 a month you get all of the above plus 16 hours of conference room use.
I don’t know why, but this doesn’t feel like such a great deal to me. So, the leasing agent told me about an EVEN BETTER deal. See, the’ve rented out an entire floor and equip it with everything you’d need for an office and then they rent that out to you, the individual. You have a kitchen, a receptionist, furniture, shared conference room, internet, telephone, etc. all for the low, low price of
One thousand forty five dollars a month.
Say what?
Yup, $1450.00
Now, if you did the math and you had no other overhead, this would be a pretty good deal, right? Your expenses would be around 20k a year and you would appear to have it all. However, there are a couple of problems. First, not all of the people sharing the space are lawyers. You have all sorts of businesses sharing a receptionist, conference room, etc. The receptionist simply greets people and then calls you to tell you they are here. In addition, you have no nameplate anywhere – nothing that says they have arrived at your office. Also, you still need to pay for your own telephone calls, Lexis or WestLaw, etc. I don’t know, maybe it is a good deal and I just got sticker shock, but for some reason I think that if I can find an office share it would be significantly less than that. Why should I pay someone every month for the use of a desk that I could buy once for probably under 200 bucks?
Someone tell me if I’m crazy and if 1450 is something I should consider.
