My experience..
I guess it would also depend on how many clients you are getting, or even want to see. If you only want to see a couple of clients a week, it probably wouldn't make sense to pay for a separate incall location. But if you are seeing several clients a week, and some of them for multiple hours, then it might be worth paying the rent/upkeep.
Exactly.
When I first started working independently, I had an agreement with a friend of mine where I was able to use his place for a really modest fee. I had a roomate at the time so there was no real option to use my home for incalls. When my friend and I decided to end this agreement (it gets a little too complicated to always depend on someone's schedule to plan your own.. I am more of a evening/night person and since this was his home and he works in the morning... well, it just wasn't convenient. Plus he was a little messy and it drove me nuts to have to spend 15-20min tidying up every time I had an appointment. LOL), I was also planning to move out (basements get hella dark in winter in Vancouver! ugh. Depressing) and I did consider renting 2 separate places but frankly, I really didn't want to feel pressure or burden to 'have' to work to make 2 rents (I dunno, hotel suites are about $1400/month + whatever your rent is... I just didn't want to have that pressure) It does depend how much you plan to work and how much of a safety stash you have, if for example you get sick or some other unexpected event happens that prevents you from working 1,2,3 weeks... That's one thing about this business IMO is that you have no control over slow months or unforseen events that put you out of commission and that nothing is constant... There are a lot of things which affect your income, that you can not plan and that was always what worried me about taking on a 2nd rent payment.
The fact that I travel almost monthly and spend a small fortune on hotels also did not make the burden of 2 rents appealing to me.
That said, I seemed to get a fair amount of outcall appointments, which made the number of appointments I took out of my home even smaller. For the most part, probably because of this, I was fine with it. I almost always kept my bedroom off limits (that's where my dog hung out when I had company over
) and had the living room set up for hosting instead. I never worried about my safety or privacy because I lived in a busy highrise on the 25th floor. Most of the elevators in these buildings won't allow anyone who hasn't been buzzed in by you to go anywhere, up or down. So it was never really a concern.
What I do find annoying is that when you're planning on doing incalls out of your home, and are in the process of searching for a place, you have to add a bunch of specific 'must haves' - ie how discrete it is, is the layout practical for what you want, are there nosy neighbors or does the owner live above or below you, is the location convenient for people to get to, is it relatively soundproof or can the people in the next suite hear every thing, etc..) And for me personally, adding more restrictions to my search ends up making it
really difficult to find something (anything) suitable and affordable that matches both my personal & incall needs/preferences, considering the fact that I have a medium size dog which pretty much eliminates 95% (if not more) of what's out there right away because everything in this city is non pet (dog) friendly. Don't think I'll ever understand or accept it but that's what it is.
I think it depends a lot on your personal situation and definitely also on how much you plan to and want to work.
