Purchasing commercial real estate in Atlanta,GA

[Dexter Morris]

Hey guys, so I need some advice. My wife is an attorney and works from her office in our house in Atlanta,GA. We have discussed what we would do when she out grows our house and we have decided that before the year is out that we would purchase our second property(our first is obviously our home). We were thinking that owning our own commercial mutli space office building and her working from it would be a win win. She would use one section of the office and provide a virtual office for the other sections of the building. FYI, A virtual office is a service type where a third party company owns an office building and provide professionals with the convenience of an office location without the overhead. The virtual office provides a answering service where a live person answers the business' phone calls and then transfers to the professional. Also, the virtual office provides an office location for the professional to utilize when necessary. The professional would schedule the days & times he or she would need to utilize the office (i.e. meeting clients, holding meetings, etc) and would pay a monthly fee for this service. The professional would have access to the office's copier, printer, scanner & fax along with other benefits of the office.

Our approach would be to have the traditional monthly service utilization but also allow for professionals to use the virtual office as a drop-in service without being in a contract for the monthly fee. For instance, if a new lawyer is starting out and can only afford to work from home but did not want to meet clients at the home, she could schedule with our office to use of the offices or meeting/conference rooms to meet with her client for a one-time fee. Another example would be if a professional was on assignment to work in another state for a month and wanted the conveniences of an office, he could pay a one-time fee just to use the office for that one month he is there. A third example would be if a small company wanted to host a conference meeting but did not have the space in their office, instead of renting a large room at a hotel, they could utilize the conference space in the virtual office for a small fee.

The drop-in usage would allow more flexibility and more streams of income than relying on the typical rental contract.

I would like to know everyone's thoughts on this and if this is a lucrative idea. How much work should we be willing to put in the renovations? The cheaper the better, but I know cheaper means more work? Also, how should we go about purchasing this property(loans, investors, etc.) Another thing to ad is that she will be focusing on real estate law, estate planning, and family law. Will that benefit us at all in the purchase process or finding a great deal?

Thank you in advance...we are so excited about the new opportunity.