Crowdsourcing has made great strides in the past year in helping people cash in on their un-used assets. Foremost amongst the industries seeing a shift has been in property. AirBnB is the standard bearer, allowing millions of people to sofa surf at the property of complete strangers.
ShareDesk are attempting to do a similar thing for office rental, by allowing companies and property owners to rent out un-used office facilities.
The latest entrant into the market is RovingBox, who are going squarely after the storage market. As you can imagine, rather than offering professional storage facilities, they are instead providing a marketplace whereby people can rent storage space from other people. The site matches homeowners that have un-used storage space in garages, attics and the like, to people that need space to store their gear.
Founder of the site Zachary Price says the site aims to offer a more flexible service than the traditional storage market.
“RovingBox provides a great way for homeowners to earn passive income by simply renting out a corner of their garage to people who need storage space for their stuff,” Price said. “For the homeowner, it makes good financial sense, and renters benefit by having a storage space that is often more affordable and flexible than they’d otherwise get by signing a lease on a traditional storage unit.”
All users need to get started is a profile for their spare space, complete with the usual profile like features such as a photo, description, the rental price, house rules and so on. Once two parties agree, RovingBox charges the renters credit card before depositing the payment into the homeowners bank account.
As with other such sites, ratings are offered to build a level of trust and reputation on the site, with customers encouraged to provide feedback on their experience.
“With the rise of the new ‘sharing economy,’ we saw that the self-storage industry could use a makeover,” Price said. “We are excited to help homeowners earn extra income, while providing renters with inexpensive and environmentally friendly storage options in their neighborhood.”
Interesting idea. Wonder how they deal with things like security though?
Ohh… this RovingBox is really great!!!! Your information will very helpful for homeowners. Thanks for sharing this unique and informative post and thus helping people a lot.
Thank you for sharing this information. I used RovingBox to rent a corner of my garage for $85 a month. Earning the extra income while the boxes just sit there is great.
The picture looks like my closet 😉
Talk about innovation.. not a bad way to earn money. I agree with Paul though, security would be a real concern.. not sure to what extent you can trust someone with your valuables.
I like the idea,…and I am a storage facility owner. Innovation and competition is good for all, except the weak and the ones with their heads in the sand. Security would be a problem, so would issues like having a stored car scratched or damaged. I see it as very innovative, however there are limitations to security, and quality of storage space.
It's a great idea to earn some extra cash but I think the problem most people will have is finding someone in their area that has storage space available because most people are limited on storage space themselves. I did a search in my area and it said they are still working on getting space available.
Yes, I suppose that will frequently crop up. The kind of houses with lots of storage space are often surrounded by other houses of a similar size. Likewise, the smaller houses/flats with no storage space are also clustered together. It will be interesting to see how the site evolves and whether a market really does materialize. Thanks for the comment Tim.