I had a friend do daycare out of a rental and her landlord limited the amount of kids she could have, to limit the amount of traffic coming and going obviously to avoid neighbour complaints and she was not allowed to decorate her daycare room without a hefty $1000 deposit to cover repainting and possible drywall repairs from all the sticky tack, staples, tape or any other wall fixtures and also if they did a crappy paint job or bright colours that needed painting over for new tenants. I think the pros for a rental are different if you are just looking at living there as a family versus running a daycare business. Also at any given time after being okay with a daycare, your landlord may suddenly change his mind and then you are left in an awkward situation.

With reference to what you are saying in the post above Mike, I think that this isn't necessarily a given in a rental property. less maintenance for example. Your landlord is supposed to keep the property well maintained and in a good state of repair, but what is classed as "satisfactory" by law may not also be the best environment for children. A landlord may fix something so it is adequate but not necessairily pleasing to daycare parents. Obviously not all landlords are an issue but there are plenty who do the bare minimum to meet their requirements as a landlord. Wouldn't it be best to be responsible for the maintenance yourself and know that they are 100% accurate and safe? Even if you eventually get things done by your landlord, you can not know or control his speed and accuracy. Those kinds of issues could lose you families and make it challenging to get new parents if they are dragging their feet and taking their sweet time doing things that to a daycare business are of top priority. The risk of having to shut down or move as you put it is a huge risk factor to me. If our professions earnings werent unstable enough this is the icing on the cake and if you move you have no guarantee that these families will move with you if you are in a competative location or it will add to their commute time. Yes I am coming across as a bit of a pesamist but I look at things objectively and from a worst case scenario, after all this is a business decision and in an industry which can be unpredictable and even more uncertain times are ahead of us with the new legislation which will be upon us in the not to distant future so I would want to be sure I was getting into things with my feet firmly planted on the ground, not with even more variables that are outside of my control. Its not to say daycare in a rental can't work, but its not like you are already living in a rental and have just decided to set up, you are purposely relocating and signing up for a rental for this specific purpose. I do wish you the best of look finding a suitable rental property for setting up your daycare, but wanted to offer some perspective from another viewpoint and one that has slightly different criteria when searching for a daycare rental rather than primarily for a family residence and also from someone with some experience of other providers having been in this situation.