You can use your house and change it later. Probably better than wasting money on a virtual office.

Regus offers 'Virtual Offices' from very prestigious addresses - they also have other services other than providing just an address (Office Space, Mail Forwarding, Phone Answering, Office Equipment, etc).

In Virginia you must use a real street address for your office. You also must have a registered agent and an address where the registered agent can be contacted.

Incorporation is a state-level activity, but it's generally the same in all of the states.

Use a parent's address with their permission.

Forgive me for not directly answering your question.

Are you sure at this point that you need an address?

Maybe you're already past that discussion, and if so I apologize. But I have seen quite a few cases where folks rush out to file paperwork long before it's actually necessary.

They say it's for creating the company. In most forms of incorporation you need to put down an address. I ran into the same problem.

i think they are doing the question more because of general excitement for their venture, than need of an answer

signing up for bank and merchant accounts

I've done this with my first three companies. Just use one of your parent's address for incorporating. Depending on the state, they usually let you specify a street address and a mailing address. Get a P.O. Box and specify that as your mailing address. Then you won't have any problems with your mail being mixed up (except for the occasional piece of junkmail). It also makes it easier to change later on, since latency in address-change doesn't affect any of your mail (which will continue going to the P.O. Box).

Get a PO box.

Better yet: http://www.techcrunch.com/tag/earthclassmail/

I use it and it works pretty well - in many ways it's better than a PO box. Actual physical address, no paper to deal with, and you don't have to drive anywhere to get your mail. The interface is a little sluggish, though (ASP & MSFT Servers...) - but they say they're working on that.

It's great if you don't want to change your address every time you move.

I don't know about other states, but in Georgia you cannot incorporate a company with the primary address being a P.O. Box. I assume that would be the case in other places as well.

Wouldn't it make the company looks shady?

If you are a web consumer website no one is going to look at your shaby address

I'm sure it would

Go to the UPS store and get a mailbox. Your Mailbox has a real street address. It will look something like 1845 Blank Street Suite #ofmailbox

I just wanted to second this -- getting a UPS Store mailbox is much better than a PO Box, if for no other reason than the fact that you can receive UPS/FedEx/DHL/etc. packages there. The post office won't sign for packages from 3rd-party carriers, so you're out of luck if you want to have anything shipped to your business address of record.

That being said, neither a UPS Store box or a residential address is exactly going to impress folks if they bother to check out your business address before decided to ink a deal with you.

Use your parents' address. I did it for my first two companies, never had a problem.

Agreed. There's no law as far as I know that requires you to have an official office address. It just has to be somewhere that people can send mail to so you can receive it.

The only downside was that my business credit card offers got mixed in with my regular credit card offers.

And if you need to incorporate in another state, get a registered agent -- they're cheap and give your company the required official address in that state.