Is Your Home Office Worth the Rent? What Coworking and Self Storage Could Save You
Key Takeaways
- Renters who trade a home office for a smaller apartment, a coworking membership and a 5’x5’ storage unit can save hundreds of dollars a month.
- Moving from a three-bedroom to a two-bedroom in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco or Seattle saves roughly $880 to $1,340 monthly, even after coworking and storage fees.
- In cities like New York, Boston and several West Coast markets, a 75-square-foot home office accounts for between $260 and $540 of monthly rent.
- A 75-square-foot home office takes up between 7.6% and 11% of the average apartment in the 20 largest U.S. cities. Seattle has the smallest average apartment at 683 square feet.
- Columbus has the smallest studios among the 20 largest cities, so even a small desk takes a big bite out of the floor plan.
Every square foot of your apartment comes with a price tag, and a home office claims more of them than most renters expect. It starts with a desk. Then come the second monitor, the printer, the filing cabinet and the overflow boxes. Before long, the corner you set aside for work has turned into a small room you are paying for every month.
Keeping work and home life separate is worth something: research links that boundary to remote workers’ mental health(opens in new tab). The question is whether you need to pay apartment rent to get it. A recent Hubble home office study(opens in new tab) found that in the largest U.S. cities, a home office eats into both renters’ space and budgets. With a 75-square-foot workspace, renters can lose more than 10% of their apartment’s square footage, and that share climbs for anyone who dedicates a full room to work.
The Hubble study looked at the 20 largest U.S. cities to see what that space costs, where it squeezes hardest, and how much renters could save by moving the work (and the clutter) out of their apartments and into a coworking desk and a self storage unit(opens in new tab).
What a home office truly costs in monthly rent
To conceptualize a home office in terms of budget, it’s time you finally use that oft-cited real estate measurement: rent per square foot. New York rental apartments average $7.3 per square foot, so a 75-square-foot home office area is equivalent to more than $540 in rent per month. The same workspace accounts for around $410 a month in San Francisco, $370 in Boston, $280 in San Jose and $260 in Los Angeles. Those figures climb further for a full-room home office of 100 square feet or more.
Where apartments are small and rents are high, even a modest home office takes a big share of your living space and rent.
Where a home office squeezes your apartment the most
Space is the other half of the equation. Among the 20 most populous cities, coastal hubs with compact apartments make a home workspace hardest to square financially. A 75-square-foot office takes up 11% of the average apartment in Seattle, and 10.3% in both New York City and San Francisco. These gateway cities are also the nation’s most rent-pressured, so a larger apartment that can host an office comes at a higher price per square foot.
At the other end, Jacksonville has the most generous apartment size of the 20 cities, and the same office there takes a more manageable 7.6%. Larger homes across the South make home offices easier to fit, with Charlotte, Fort Worth and Houston also scoring well. Step up to a 100-square-foot study, a comfortable but hardly lavish size, and the workspace claims between 10% and 15% of the average apartment in every one of the 20 cities.
Apartment type matters too. Seattle has the smallest average apartment overall, but the smallest studios are in Columbus: 400 square feet on average, compared with 412 in Seattle. For a remote worker in a Columbus studio, a dedicated desk area leaves very little room for anything else, which is exactly the situation where offloading belongings to storage makes the most sense.
How coworking and a 5’x5’ storage unit changes the math
A 5’x5’ unit measures 25 square feet, the same footprint as the small desk in our analysis. Many remote workers are ditching their pandemic-era home office setups(opens in new tab) because they feel isolated or want a firmer line between work and home. If you are one of them, there is a financial upside too. You can downsize your home(opens in new tab), rent a coworking hub desk(opens in new tab) for the work, and use self storage for the belongings that no longer fit.
Los Angeles is a good example of how that can play out. Moving from a three-bedroom to a two-bedroom apartment cuts rent by an average of $1,210 per month. A coworking membership plus a 5’x5’ storage unit in Los Angeles(opens in new tab) costs an average of $350 per month combined, which leaves a net saving of $859. Even after factoring in the cost of getting to the coworking space, the savings are substantial, and you gain a place to work that is separate from home, with people to bounce ideas off(opens in new tab).
With a few exceptions, the biggest savings come from dropping from a three-bedroom to a two-bedroom. In New York(opens in new tab), Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle, that move saves roughly $880 to $1,340 a month after coworking and storage fees (New York leads at $1,344).
Where a home office away from home doesn’t pay off
The math looks different in lower-rent markets, where a smaller apartment saves less than it costs to rent coworking and storage. Switching from a one-bedroom to a studio would add to your monthly spending in Houston (-$66), Dallas (-$47), Fort Worth (-$14), Austin (-$131), Oklahoma City (-$131), Charlotte (-$163) and Indianapolis (-$69). Going from a two-bedroom to a one-bedroom also comes out negative in Columbus (-$14), Indianapolis (-$11) and Oklahoma City (-$50).
In those cities, the better move may be keeping your current apartment and using a storage unit only to free up room for a desk, rather than giving up a bedroom.
What to move into storage to make room
Whether you downsize or just want your home office back as living space, a small unit can hold more than you might think. Good candidates include:
- Seasonal items such as holiday decorations, winter gear and sports equipment
- Extra furniture, including that spare desk or bookshelf
- Archived paperwork and files you must keep but rarely open
- Spare office equipment, such as old monitors, printers and cables
- Boxes you have not opened since your last move
A 5’x5’ unit works for a handful of boxes and small furniture, while a bigger unit suits the contents of an entire spare room. Pick the smallest size that fits, since every extra square foot adds to the monthly bill you are trying to cut.
Is Your Home Office Worth the Rent? What Coworking and Self Storage Could Save You
Every square foot of your apartment comes with a price tag, and a home office claims more of them than most renters expect. It starts with a desk. Then come the second monitor, the printer, the filing cabinet and the overflow boxes. Before long, the corner you set aside for work has turned into a small room you are paying for every month.
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