Re: Looking for advice and perhaps a little inspiration

My take on it is, rent the small office near home with room for the edit suite, a conference room, and a little gear storage.

It is nice to have some separation between the home and the office, on several levels; personal, business, and public. I remember a guy who told us here way back of incidents that happened with a physically violent client in his home office/studio. We all have stories of clients we never want to see again... and if stuff like that happens to you, where do you go to get away from it, if you only have a home setup? So while you can do most of it from a home office in terms of phones and internet, have the suite be off site, is my own opinion. It also makes it easier to deliniate what is home expense and what is business. You can have the biz phone chase you seamlessly wherever you happen to be, but thre ofice space gives you a better place to meet physically with clients.

As for the studio, seems like you don't need a full-time studio. Perhaps you can rent space by the day with the local cable access studio. Or go in with a bunch of other local producers on one shared warehouse/studio space, that's just a bare grid and power, so the monthly rent stays very low. Not perfect, since the AC, pwoer, and soundproofing may not be as good as a purpose-built studio. But maybe it's enough, until the boom times come back.