I'm on a mailing list to which the following was recently sent:

Plug & Play office space. We are a communications software startup, having some space available at our Los Altos office. Nice furniture, upstairs, with lots of windows. Month to month only, $700/mo will get you about 400 s.f., full service (utils, insurance, office furniture, best-effort dsl, and janitor). Just bring your phones and you are ready to conquer the market.

They're aiming this as startup companies that want to simply move in and get to work. But looking at it, I couldn't help but to notice that it is cheaper than residential space. That's right. If you're not happy with the selection of places to stay, just move on in here with your little company and bring a sleeping bag!

I wonder if there's a shower and a little kitchen area... Not that I'm looking or anything.

Posted by jzawodn at March 21, 2004 08:59 AM

Reader Comments
# Craig said:

Any startup company which only needs 400sf and ends up paying $700/mth is getting taken in this market. Well, it's probably fairly nice space in Los Altos; I bet the furniture's decent, and they might even not mind if you suck up a fair chunk of their DSL connection's bandwidth -- but still seems expensive at $1.75 per sf. Plus, month-to-month only means that in 30 days, you might have to move -- that's a lot of fun when you're trying to get a company under way.

on March 21, 2004 10:37 AM
# tfr said:

Isn't it the default case in the US? Down here it's pretty normal that you can get an office space downtown cheaper than a flat of the same size. The more expensive the place generally is, the bigger the difference towards the office space being cheaper. Mostly comes out of the fact that the offers/requests ratio is biased strongly towards the offers in the business market whereas it's the other way with the residential stuff.

on March 21, 2004 10:46 AM
# Rasmus said:

$700 for 400 sq.ft doesn't seem cheaper than residential to me. I definitely don't pay anywhere near 7/4 of my square footage in rent here. More like 4/5.

on March 21, 2004 08:35 PM
# Eric Bullen said:

There is one thought that is missing from this- try getting that 700/month rate in a 5 year lease. You won't get it. The reason why it's month-to-month is that the first month is $700, next month,it's $750, etc. Because once you're in the office, you're at their mercy. Don't want to pay it? Move out, and by the way, change all your letterhead that you just bought.

on March 22, 2004 09:31 AM
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