If You Have More Than One Location.....

[Christina72684]

I have some questions. If you have more than one daycare, please help me out!

1. How long after you opened your first location did you open your second?

2. Did you divide up your ages?

3. How close are your buildings?

4. Is one of them a Preschool? If so, how different is it than just a daycare?

5. Do you have any advice, do's or don't's, etc?


I opened my first daycare just 7 MONTHS ago, but I have the opportunity to buy my next door neighbor's house that is less than 30 feet away from our daycare. An elderly couple is living there and moving into an assisted living facility. There's only one catch: THEY NEED OUT BY APRIL!!!! So not only have we been opened less than a year, we have less than 2 months to decide if we want to buy this house and what to do with it. We are freaking out, so excited, so overwhelmed, so OHMYGOSH! What should we do?!

[Meeko]

Check with your city and your state licensing folks.

Here in Utah, you must live in the home you are doing day care in, unless you are licensed as a center and then that's a whole other ball of wax when it comes to licensing regs and city zoning and building regs etc.

But some states allow you to do "home" daycare without actually living there.

I do daycare in our old home and moved to another one about 8 miles away. My son still lives at the day care one. It's his name on the license because of that, even though I am the business owner.

My advise is just do a ton of homework!

[Christina72684]

No we don't have to live in our daycare home. There's one daycare owner in my area that owns 7 different daycare homes! Another lady owns 5! I'd be happy with 3-4 eventually, but not ready for that much yet!