Online parking marketplace, YourParkingSpace.co.uk has reported a 200 percent year-on-year increase in parking space rental earnings in 2016.
Home owners and businesses across the UK cashed in on more than £6 million by renting out their unused parking spaces through the website in 2016, up from £2 million in 2015. The parking platform now has 35,000 private and commercial landlords registered on its platform, growing by 2,000 new landlords each month.
Its customers rent out a variety of parking spaces through the site including driveways, private off-street spaces, lock-up garages and commercially owned car park spaces.
Harrison Woods, managing director of YourParkingSpace.co.uk believes the surge in landlords renting out their underused parking spaces is reflective of the wider sharing economy. “The improvements in technology have made it far easier for individuals to connect and share items they don’t make full use of, from renting out their spare rooms to their spare parking spaces, and we’ve seen the proof of that with the increase in the number of people using our service over the past couple of years,” he explained.
“The sharing economy is booming at the moment, it’s an excellent way to generate some extra income and it’s great to see so many of our customers benefitting from it”.
Victoria Matthews from Shepherd’s Bush, London, lives close to the popular Westfield Shopping Centre and rents out her privately-owned parking space for £12 a day. She comments, “I have an allocated parking space that comes with my flat that I wasn’t using so when I heard about YourParkingSpace.co.uk it made perfect sense to rent it out to someone that needed it. It only took five minutes to list on their website, it’s all been very straightforward and the extra money at the end of each month has helped a great deal.”
Business owner, Marc Studholme runs Flexispace, a self-storage company, and earns £10,000 a year by renting out unused parking spaces at their facility in Manchester. “We’re ideally located for the city centre and Manchester City’s Ethiad stadium so we’re a popular parking choice for shoppers and football fans. The extra revenue is a great benefit, but it also helps to raise the profile of our business, with our parkers much more likely to come to Flexispace the next time they need a self-storage solution,” he comments.
