Home occupations are thriving businesses that run out of residential homes. The City of Weyburn has a process accompanied by regulations to ensure everyone is going through the same channels and receiving the same information. This means all the businesses will be following City bylaws and being fair to other businesses and the community as a whole.

"If you're looking to run a home occupation there is an application form that you would fill out, and there is a $50.00 fee that goes with it," says Amanda Kaufmann, Building Official for the City of Weyburn. "What we do is we would take the information you provide us and we send out a neighbourhood notice around your home, 75 metres, just to get any neighbourhood comments of feedback."

If your business is not directing any public to your home, the business can generally avoid that process with the approval coming straight from the City. Weyburn does see a large amount of these cases in home offices, businesses such as accounting services, or online work.

Personal services such as hairdressing or other aesthetics are becoming more popular. With that style of business comes a higher amount of foot traffic and customers.

"We have regulations because we don't want the neighbourhood to lose the feel of a residential neighbourhood," says Kaufmann. "We look at things like parking and hours of operation if there is anything that is going to be delivered to the home and what kind of noise you're going to be creating by having a home occupation."

Regulations are monitored based on residential complaints as there is not enough manpower to check every home occupation regularly. Most concerns are around failure to stay within designated hours or too many customers causing complications with traffic, parking, and noise.

Other regulations include items such as only residents of the home can work at the dwelling, the occupation cannot take up more than 25% of the floor space, articles offered for sale must be limited to those produced by the home occupation and no advertising the location of the home. The City does, however, allow signage for the business but it must be approved and remain small and subtle.

"Home occupation is a good thing for people who maybe aren't a large company, or they are trying to start out a business and they're not sure how successful it's going to be," says Kaufmann. "It's a good opportunity for them to try it out, build a client based business and then down the road maybe they will move into a commercial business downtown."

Once the permit is approved for home occupation, the business owner can then apply for a City of Weyburn business license. Home occupations can be limited depending on the services, however, it is a great way to try out a business without leasing commercial property.