Working from Home in Rented Accomodation, Is it Legal/Possible to Do?

blobert

Hello,

I'm starting a new online store. To begin with I'd like to start the business from home, I have plenty of room in my apartment to store the stock (items are quite small) and I would not need to move to a larger premises until the business grew substantially. The business would not involve customers calling to the apartment and would not cause any inconvenience to other residents. I'd be starting up as a Ltd company as opposed to a sole trader.

Is it possible to do this? I've found a few posts on UK forums that suggest it is but I cannot find anything Ireland related.

I was told that it might be a problem due to the management company not allowing commercial activities?

There is no mention of this in my lease.

Any advice/opinions would be much appreciated.

Thanks

R3al

You are most probably going to run into issues with your landlord as he would have rented the property to you as a residential property and not a commercial property

Planning permission may also be required to run a business from a residential property depending on the nature of the business and other factors

There may also be insurance considerations for you and your landlord for instance household insurance may be invalidated by the property being used for business

It is likely that even if your own rental agreement does not mention anything about running a business that the lease for the entire apartment block prohibits using the premises for commercial activity. You may want to discuss the idea with your landlord.

murphaph

If your lease doesn't state "residential tenancy agreement" or some such I'd be very surprised tbh.

You could chance your arm I suppose and hope nobody finds out (if it's not a case of stock up to the ceiling in the spare room) but you'll not be able to get insurance for the stock in a residential property (they always exclude commercial uses) and your landlord's policy won't cover your stuff anyway.

Does you landlord call around to inspect/collect rent frequently? If so, it's a non-runner.

blobert

Thanks for the replies guys.

For a ltd company I believe I would have to list the registered address on the main page of the website, I'm not keen to do this with my family home and it seems like it might not be possible to legally use my rental apartment.

Would it be possible to have your registered address with Regus or equivalent, ie a virtual office where you can still receive correspondence? Cro state that your registered address:

Physical Location
The address must be a physical location, not just a post office box number, because people have the right to visit the company's registered office to inspect certain registers and documents and to deliver documents by hand. A letter addressed to the company at its registered office address must be capable of being delivered by An Post.

I read someone else of someone putting down their accountant's address as their business's registered address so I'm assuming something like this is possible?

Was hoping I could use a registered address such as one above and then sort out insurance etc to work from my family home.

Does this sound feasible? The alternative is an incubator unit in an enterprise centre but that is going to be €300+ per month and I'd like to avoid that till I the business is up and running.