So I am looking at house, and being the baseball hitting guy that I am I see a home for sale out here with a professional indoor batting cage. This thing is 82X21, (1722 Sq. Feet) and just about the sweetest thing I’ve seen and somehow my wife is not against it. (house nice at 3K Sq. Feet)

As I am thinking about how awesome it would be as a workout facility for my prodigy (not really they are ok but not the next Adrian), it dawned on that I could in fact sublet time. Or provide personal instruction to kids, whatever. This cage is very well done, concrete foundation, trussed/architectural shingled roof, professionally lit, ceiling fans, and exhaust fans etc. Also sits on 1 acre lot. Anyway this isn’t just some guy who put up a net in the backyard and said there is a cage. As I look at this place, I am certain, I could easily add a really machine, and make a nice little side income, or at least write-off a majority of my kids’ hobby. So there would be some personal use, but I have a history as a coach and ran a travel club in SoCal for several years though I never bothered filing anything (since I lost money, it was more for our kids to play without paying some coach).

Here is my question.
– Better to write off expenses for the facility as part of a home use? The cage is attached to the house but does kind of stand out back by itself.
– Or better to simply have a few families who need to use it just come by and leave me some money in the tip jar?

The 2nd option could be technically illegal although if my kid is paying for some travel team and the team wants to practice there… and they help upgrade stuff with donations, is that really a business situation? I would imagine running this as a business is a much better way to go.

I haven’t purchased this house but I like the place and started thinking about how easy it would be to run some kind of night business at the place. Might be a nice way for Mrs. Baseball to exit the teaching biz if it seems the cash inflow coupled with write-offs make it worthwhile.

What happens f you go to sell the place in 10 years and you’ve been deducting legit business expenses against business income, what happens to home profits? I can’t imagine it would threaten the 250K freebie for sale of a home (is that right).

Lastly, I have an opportunity to go teach a few tech classes this year and the guy wants to me to go 1099 for the courses (techie stuff, not baseball related). Anyway to create a single business under the umbrella of academy or instruction and put all expenses/income in one big lot? I would think the spouse if she ever tutored or something to that effect could, but the thing is batting instruction/cage time is not exactly flying to Seattle to give a two-day course on a tech topic.