The Expert Podcast

Today we're going to look at a batch of 10 properties that could be very unique situations for somebody who wanted a live work type of scenario where you live in a property and run a significant business from that property. All of these will have at least three thousand square feet, some of them have eight nine thousand, at the end we're going to show you one that has forty thousand square feet. All these properties appear to have already living space in them, a bedroom, a bathroom, so they could be move-in ready. All the properties are under two hundred thousand dollars, in fact one of them is under a hundred thousand dollars.

The reason that this comes up is we talk to a lot of potential clients that want to do something where this work from home new environment in the various industries is taking off, but they want to do more than just have a bedroom where they work from or maybe an office space. They want to do something more substantial, maybe it's a video studio, maybe they want to do light manufacturing, maybe they want to do baking, some type of artwork.

I can remember back in the mid there was a story of a person who built furniture and they were in California, and what happened was their rent for their workshop was very high and their property values was high. So they bought an old car dealership, I believe it was in Pennsylvania, for a hundred hundred fifty thousand dollars. And they took the office space that was upstairs, made it their residence, the downstairs showroom that was where they used to sell cars, they put where they put their finished furniture that they built, and the service department in the back where they used to work on cars was their workshop. And he went from selling you know maybe five or six thousand dollars worth of furniture every month to selling couple million dollars a year because he could display his furniture, he could manufacture in more space, cheaper overhead, and he didn't have to keep his old job.

So here's some examples of unique type of properties where you may be able to create your dream business with more space, live on property and not have a huge mortgage. First one we're going to look at is 6,400 square feet. This property is already showing to have four beds and two baths. A lot of these are going to be old schools, hospitals, maybe churches, maybe airplane hangars, but there's a lot of different creative uses for these. It's all brick, it's got a lot of interesting features inside the property. You know, a lot of these properties have unique woodwork. I mean, this is a room here you could make a video studio out of, you could store inventory in this room, tons and tons of space, all right, multiple floors of space, and there's living space already built into this property. I believe there's a photo that shows where there's a bathroom right, there's space where you could live.

Next property we'll jump to is this is even as a storefront, this property is 189,000. 5,000 square feet Baker City Oregon, I'm sorry that's the lot, 5,000 square feet, the building space is 3,600 square feet. It has a retail store front, so if you want to retail something you still have two beds, two bath, probably upstairs, and you have retail space where you could offer products for sale to customers. Looks like it has a little back porch type of living space, regular kitchen. None of these may be mansions where they're luxury granite countertops, but you have living space and you have an office, extra bedroom, and you have retail space. You could retail items or have your office here or even just keep it locked up and have it be your workspace. Again, under 200,000, 189,000, mixed-use residential upstairs with commercial main level, right, so it's a unique opportunity.

This is this one's very similar, 169, 6,400 square feet, retail space downstairs, two beds, one and a half bath. This is in Fort Scott, Kansas. You know, has retail space, looks like it has kitchen residential, and then here's your workshop. You need space to manufacture goods, do assembly. You're probably not going to be able to do a lot of chemicals and maybe dangerous manufacturing, but you may be able to do light woodworking. You want to check with all the zoning on these, but it's another example of a unique property.

This one I kind of like the looks of, this one's in Montana, Roundup Montana, central Montana. It's a building which is 5,400 square feet, is let's see if we can find the price, 175,000 is the price. Once again, very living space, residential kitchen and some very large usable space for manufacturing. This is the last one we'll look at that's more traditional retail space and we'll get to some even larger buildings. This is in Coolidge, Georgia. This property is where's the price, I don't have to find the price on this one, five bedrooms, five baths, oh here it is, living area four thousand five hundred square feet. Well, we may have to skip on this one, looking for a log in, but you can look up the address 1043 South Pine Street.

Next, look at this one, 9,860 square feet, 125,000, Cisco, Georgia. This is I believe southeastern Georgia, old school house, five beds, one and a half bath, very large property. This one probably needs a little more work inside than some of the other ones. You can see some of the buildings are boarded up, but the square footage is huge, and if you want to put some elbow grease in, you could have a very large building.

Look at this building, this is amazing, this is 149 thousand dollars, very unique open space. Again, video studio comes to mind, something that you need stacked up boxes or stacked up inventory comes to mind. It has residential space, here's a bed, there's a bathroom, you know, very large bathroom for living space. Hundred and forty nine thousand dollars, this is in Hornell, New York, which is central New York. It's like an old church or an old school. We'll get to the 40,000 square foot building in a minute.

5,000 square feet, Boulevard, Pennsylvania, 50,000, right, two-bedroom, two-bath, a lot of open space. Looks like an old church or a meeting hall, probably if it was a meeting hall, with some residential space. Thirty thousand square foot lot, that's you know three quarters of an acre lot. And yeah, may need some updates to the walls. It says in the ad that the electrical is updated, two huge rooms upstairs, two oversized rooms that could be divided, newer oil furnace, upgraded 200 amp service. You know, here's looks like it has a nice little yard too.

Here's a property that has some unique potential for the right person, Glenn Falls, New York, also in New York, very unique building, 4,400 square feet, it's a studio, one bath. Let's take a look at a couple photos on this one before we get to our last. It's an old church, obviously, again the looks of it, it's a religious facility. But if you took out all of the inside fixtures and imagine what you could do with this ceiling height, you know, you could build any type of tall above ceiling type of structures that you needed to.

Last one's very unique, 40,000 square foot building, 199,000, this is in Iowa. It has living space, it's got a kitchen, it's got a bedroom, you can see the bedroom here, and all kinds of space, a big garage and cargo area. Looks like it's got a little bit of a lot, obviously it's an old school. But what could you do with 40,000 square feet? Not for the ordinary, according to the ad.

So this is an example of where a creative, ambitious, entrepreneurial mind can find a property with living space that can be used to offset your personal overhead for rent or mortgage and still have commercial space for manufacturing, assembly, shipping, video production, Zoom meetings, whatever you want to use it for without having a huge mortgage. Remember, all of these were under 200,000, they all had at least 3,000 square feet, and they all had living space.

These are 10 example properties from across the country. There are certainly dozens more, probably hundreds more that fit this description. It gives you an example of where if you wanted to lever up your lifestyle and spend some time and money developing a business, you don't have to pay commercial rent on a property because you own it. You don't have to pay for a large mortgage because you live in your business space, and you can grow your business and expand it to where it gets to the size that maybe then you want to do something different with your residents. But it gives you a work space, kind of leapfrog ahead of the competition without having to spend a lot of money for a property or for commercial rent.