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The pros and cons of running an art gallery in your own house

If you want to show artwork but can't afford the rent for a dedicated space to do so, exhibiting in your own house or apartment that you live in could be an attractive option, depending on your personal circumstances.

In Chicago, they're called "apartment galleries" even if it's in someone's house that they own. The trend is picking up steam here in Detroit. Here is a list of some of the pros and cons to consider.

Pros

A lot of the expenses are already taken care of. Like utilities, for example. You might have to buy more lights, and install track lighting, but at least the electric bill is already taken care of. Plus you already have a fridge in which to store cheese and chill wine.
No commission on sales of your own artwork. Plus you can extend that to your friends as well, or you could charge them less than 30%. (I personally think a 50% commission is unreasonable, unless the gallery is going to go way above and beyond in promoting the artwork and getting sales, but that's a whole other topic).
No censorship. You can show artwork that some people would consider pornographic. If you rent, your landlord could have a problem with it, but if you own the place outright, who has any right to complain?
Events at such galleries in metro Detroit can still be listed in Art Detroit Now even though they're not formal galleries. An apartment gallery doesn't even have to have an actual name, if the owner is properly connected to Art Detroit Now, the event will get listed in the newsletter with the address where the name would go (whereas by contrast Art Detroit Now often ignores other venues). I'm sure a similar situation applies in other major metropolitan areas.
You can neatly and easily discontinue the gallery if you choose to do so. Compare that to a formal gallery where you might have to lay off staff and find someone to buy the place.

Cons

Your family might not like strangers coming through the house. This is of course not a problem if you live by yourself.
Your pets might not like strangers either. There's this one artist who runs a gallery out of his house, and his dog would just bark and bark at me incessantly whenever I came to the gallery. It turns out that she wanted me to pet her. I don't know if he also has a cat, but if he does, the cat is probably too frightened to even be seen by the visitors.
People might show up to your house at an inopportune time. With a regular gallery, it happens that people show up at the wrong time. But with an apartment gallery, the wrong time could be a really bad time. That's all I'm going to say about that.
Parking could be a problem. A regular gallery might be located close to a parking lot. But parking on the streets of a residential area is not really geared to having lots of visitors. In some cases, if your neighbors also have lots of visitors of their own, your visitors could have to park several blocks away.

Layout factors

The layout of your house or apartment could be a pro or a con in this decision. First of all, do you have an area that you can use for this purpose? And if so, to what extent do you want to separate it from the rest of the residence?

In my limited experience going to apartment galleries, I have seen two extremes firsthand. In one extreme, a visitor can theoretically go to any part of the house, but is in practice deterred from doing so only by commonsense and courtesy; though it could happen that an absentminded visitor goes where he shouldn't. The other extreme is that a padlocked door prevents even the most absentminded visitor from wandering off.

Whether the entrance to the gallery is a front door or a back door, you want to have some kind of signage to let people know the gallery's open (only when it's open, of course). It doesn't have to be anything elaborate and you certainly don't want it to be permanent, so either a simple lawn sign or a sandwich board will do.