Our lease is up on our US-based office-space in July, so it's back on my radar to evaluate our office-space situation.

Two of our partners rather like the idea of leasing a house rather than standard office-space.

We have 4 partners and one employee.

I'm against the idea at this moment in time.

Pros, as I see them

• Easier to get a good location (minimize commutes)
• All partners/employees have dogs. Easier to work longer hours without dog-duties pulling people back home
• More comfortable bathroom situation
• Residential Internet Rate
• Control of the thermostat
• Clients don't come to our office, so this would not change our image
• The additional comfort-level should facilitate a significantly higher-percentage of time "in the zone" for programmers and artists.

Cons, as I see them

• Additional bills to pay (house-cleaning, yard, util, gas, electric)
• Additional time-overhead in dealing with bills (house-cleaning, yard, util, gas, electric)
• Additional overhead required to deal with issues that maintenance would have dealt with in a standard office-space
• Residential neighbors to contend with

The equation starts to look a little nasty when factoring in potential time-overhead, especially on issues that a maintenance crew would deal with at a standard office complex.

Can this be a good thing for a software development shop?