While Chris and Dave are beavering away making their money doing multiple ventures and have got the cashflow going, I, like Prince Nasseem Hamed am dancing around the ring looking for that knock-out punch which will bring untold riches in one go.
Being a fan of efficiency, I loath and detest resources sitting idle. I tried my luck with www.fatlama.com, with limited success (I’ve successfully rented NOTHING), so being a gluton for punishment but also an economic optimist, I decided to give another social enterprise a go: www.stashbee.com
Stashbee has been around for a while but I came to know about them when they were crowdfunding for expansion. I didn’t invest in them (mostly because I didn’t have funds available at the time – I’m an all or nothing kind of guy: I’m not going to invest £20) although I really liked the idea – they allow you to rent out your spare space: lofts, spare rooms, parking spaces, lock ups…
As with my strimmer, chainsaw, log horse, Dyson etc, I have loft space which is sitting doing nothing, so why not rent it out to someone else before my nearest and dearest fill it with all manner of crap she’s bought?
Stashbee doesn’t have an app, which seperates it from Fat Lama in terms of ease of use for listing. Given that you need to take a picture of the space you are letting, an app would be helpful, but the website on smartphone and tablet is fairly easy to use.
I went up into my loft, went through boxes, consolidated, stacked and made better use of the space. This left me with roughtly 8m² (84ft² in old money) available to rent out. The website asks you to list any particular features, i.e. if the renter will have exclusive access, own entrance, is it locked, does it have power etc. Again, all points you can use to set your space apart from your competitors.
The competition & pricing
Like Fat Lama, being in the middle of nowhere, there aren’t many people listing space in the surrounding area; the next nearest is a lady renting her garage about 5miles away. Is this good? Is it bad? If the Fat Lama experience is anything to go by, I don’t anticipate it being to my advantage, but y’know…in for a penny…
Then came the question of pricing. How the hell do you price empty space? I had rented a storage unit in a nearby town for a year while we were renovating our house. They charged me £80 a month for 50ft², but their space was more flexible (I could store furniture etc which isn’t possible in the space I have available), so I worked on the principle that my space would be let at a lower rate. Fine with me. It’s sitting there doing nothing so anything I can get for it is a bonus.
Stashbee gives you the option of setting your own price OR they will set for you. For this as my first listing, I decided to let Stashbee set the rent and see what happens. I can always revise it later if necessary.
They also give the option of letting the space as one or you can divide it up into smaller sections; for this listing, I’ve gone whole hog and let it all as one space. Again, if it doesn’t bare fruit, I can change this to see if it makes any difference.
The obvious concerns
You’re letting an unknown person store stuff in your house. It could be anything. First things first, the items stored by the renter are covered by Stashbee’s insurance, so that’s one less thing to worry about. Stashbee guarantees the monthly rental and also ID checks the renter. They also have a process in place should the renter not collect their posessions at the end of their rental – all good enough for me.
The next question is about access: In the case of renting your garage to someone, you can grant them exclusive access and give them a key so they can come and go as they please. This is clearly not an option when renting a loft space; I’m not about to give a complete unknown a key to my house. This means I have set a condition of renting my space as being that access is only possible via pre-arrangement; again, this may not appeal to everyone.
What next?
Well, I’ve got 8m² of loft space for rent at the princely sum of £62.99 a month. At the time of going to print it is going very much the way of Fat Lama, but let’s see what happens. I will give it a few weeks and then consider revising the conditions, (first up would be the option to rent a smaller area rather than drop my price for the whole thing…as any good business knows, once you’ve dropped your prices, you’ll rarely be able to raise them again), but let’s see what happens before we start worrying about these things.
I’ll update you in a few weeks.