Make Money With Your Home

October 8th, 2008 by admin

Make Money With Your Home

We’ve looked at how to make money from your home: here are some ideas to make money with your home - and you don’t necessarily have to take in a lodger!

Rent out your driveway

Especially if you live in the city - close to the action - this can be a great way to earn money with your home (or the space a round it), without lifting a finger. All you need is an empty driveway or allocated parking space and you could be earning upwards from £50 per month (and four times that in some areas of London). Living close to a football ground (especially a Premier league one) could also be very profitable on match days.
Rent out storage space

If you don’t use your garage, attic, cellar etc and as long as it is secure, dry and safe, you could rent out that space as a storage facility. (You can charge more for garage space as your renter can have their own access.) This may mean a tenner for a couple of boxes for a student over the holidays, or it could mean a reasonable rent for a houseful of furniture in your garage for six months: it’s another good way to make money with your home!

You would need to draw up an agreement, and check insurance cover etc first, then think about advertising locally in the papers, or through the local University.
Take a Lodger

It’s not the only way to make money with your home, but it is a good way! It is also tax free! Not recommended if you like your family time and privacy, but if you get the right person it can work brilliantly. In some areas (cities, or close to main facories/plants) you could also have a midweek lodger Monday to Friday: good money and some space at the weekend.

Obviously you need a spare bedroom and you need to think through issues such as cooking (most people would expect bed, breakfast and evening meal - possibly lunch at the weekend - but if you can cope with sharing your kitchen you could provide cupboard and fridge space and let your lodger do their own catering.

Take careful and thorough references It goes without saying (especially with children around!) It can seem a little awkward at times bt when we have had lodgers we have always asked for three references and we have always followed them up (it’s amazing how many people don’t!!)

We have also always invited the prospective lodger for a meal with us while the kids were about. If the kids didn’t take to them it was a non-starter, and if they didn’t interact with the kids it was also a non-starter. Might sound fussy, but it saved a lot of heartache in the end.

We also had an agreement (written if possible) that we could give the lodger a month’s notice to vacate if we needed to. That has got us out of trouble more than once when things didn’t work out.

If you have a local language college they are usually on the lookout for English families to host international students and this is a great way to start as they are usually short term for the duration of the course, your contract will be with the college and not the individual (which makes things easier) and it can be a great experience for kids to have someone from a different culture living in their home.

Advertising locally can work, although you really would need to screen all applicants.

Or you can advertise nationally, with companies such as Easyroommate or Roomsforlet
Rent Your House Out as a Film / TV Location

I’ve never tried this, but it sounds like an interesting way to make money with your home - and think who you might meet in your kitchen!!