WaverlyWannaBe
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- Jun 22, 2008
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Hi,
here's our story. my husband and I would like to purchase a property. The property is absolutely lovely and in the best location for a guesthouse. It's my dream home and dream business to be perfectly honest.
Unfortunately, the price is out of our comfort zone right now as my husband and I are both self-employed.
So, after touring the place, I was absolutely beside myself to find that there was a 2-br 1830 guesthouse on the 1.5 acre property that could be restored as a working guesthouse. Granted, w/ two bedrooms it wouldn't be a huge moneymaker but it would be a fantastic little side business for me, a self-employed artist and work at home mom.
I immediately began researching funding for the project, contacting all sorts of government agencies regarding grants for women owned businesses or low interest loans. I'm currently reading pages and pages of documents. My first question is, "are there indeed grants available for this type of project?" I'm told there are grants for businesses and also low interest loans. We need to find the money to purchase the property and unfortunately we don't have any rich aunts or uncles to load the money to us.
We met our next obstacle when my husband spoke to a person on the zoning board. Much to our dismay, the property is not zoned for any type of guesthouse, inn or b&b. But we were told we could apply for a variance but most likely it would be denied. I wonder whether all of these hurdles are a sign that it wasn't meant to be. I'm a persistent person who isn't ready to give up just yet? A few days later, my husband spoke to a friend on the board of supervisors and he thought it was a great idea and said he would speak to the zoning people. So there is a slight possibility that we would be granted conditional use but we're not getting our hopes up.
Just for curiosity, have you encountered similar problems with your own b&b businesses? If I may be so bold, how did you finance your businesses? I'm particularly interested in whether you were awarded grants.
Now, you might ask if we could get some kind of historic preservation grant and the answer is probably not. We would be precluded from restoration grants because although the main residence was built in 1850 and the guesthouse was built in 1830, it is not on the historic register. But, still is there some other type of historic grant I could go after?
The bottom line is we simply can't afford it unless we are really financially creative. But, if we all were to wait until we had that million stashed away, there would be very few new businesses.
Here's our plan. We would live in the main residence, a 4-bedroom Victorian with our two young boys and rent the guesthouse. It might sound ridiculous to rent the building w/ the least income potential but the guesthouse wouldn't be large enough for our family. I don't want a large-scale inn or b&b at this point. The other outbuilding would be my art studio.
My husband said we need to purchase the property with low interest loans and grants and then work on the guesthouse.
Sorry for rambling...there's so much more to say but I'll stop for now. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
here's our story. my husband and I would like to purchase a property. The property is absolutely lovely and in the best location for a guesthouse. It's my dream home and dream business to be perfectly honest.
Unfortunately, the price is out of our comfort zone right now as my husband and I are both self-employed.
So, after touring the place, I was absolutely beside myself to find that there was a 2-br 1830 guesthouse on the 1.5 acre property that could be restored as a working guesthouse. Granted, w/ two bedrooms it wouldn't be a huge moneymaker but it would be a fantastic little side business for me, a self-employed artist and work at home mom.
I immediately began researching funding for the project, contacting all sorts of government agencies regarding grants for women owned businesses or low interest loans. I'm currently reading pages and pages of documents. My first question is, "are there indeed grants available for this type of project?" I'm told there are grants for businesses and also low interest loans. We need to find the money to purchase the property and unfortunately we don't have any rich aunts or uncles to load the money to us.
We met our next obstacle when my husband spoke to a person on the zoning board. Much to our dismay, the property is not zoned for any type of guesthouse, inn or b&b. But we were told we could apply for a variance but most likely it would be denied. I wonder whether all of these hurdles are a sign that it wasn't meant to be. I'm a persistent person who isn't ready to give up just yet? A few days later, my husband spoke to a friend on the board of supervisors and he thought it was a great idea and said he would speak to the zoning people. So there is a slight possibility that we would be granted conditional use but we're not getting our hopes up.
Just for curiosity, have you encountered similar problems with your own b&b businesses? If I may be so bold, how did you finance your businesses? I'm particularly interested in whether you were awarded grants.
Now, you might ask if we could get some kind of historic preservation grant and the answer is probably not. We would be precluded from restoration grants because although the main residence was built in 1850 and the guesthouse was built in 1830, it is not on the historic register. But, still is there some other type of historic grant I could go after?
The bottom line is we simply can't afford it unless we are really financially creative. But, if we all were to wait until we had that million stashed away, there would be very few new businesses.
Here's our plan. We would live in the main residence, a 4-bedroom Victorian with our two young boys and rent the guesthouse. It might sound ridiculous to rent the building w/ the least income potential but the guesthouse wouldn't be large enough for our family. I don't want a large-scale inn or b&b at this point. The other outbuilding would be my art studio.
My husband said we need to purchase the property with low interest loans and grants and then work on the guesthouse.
Sorry for rambling...there's so much more to say but I'll stop for now. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.