Photo by Pink Sherbert Photography
Every week I’ll pose a question for you to share your experiences and tips. If you have a question that you’d like me to post, I’d love to hear from you!
Owning a home can be — especially in this economy — can be a money pit. Pay your mortgage, pay for repairs, pay for this, pay for that. But have you ever thought about using your home to actually earn money?
According to this article from Houselogic, there are several ways you can actually make money of your home. A vegetable garden may be an obvious one, but some of the other ideas they listed were new to me. For example, if you live near a busy metro area, you might be able to rent out your driveway to commuters. You could also take on temporary or long-term boarders, rent out a room in your home as storage space or even as a home-office-away-from-home for someone else, or purchase a wind turbine to produce your own electricity.
Do you currently use your home to make money? If so, how? What other way can you use your home to make money? Are comfortable with the thought of other people using your home? Do you know other people that rent out part of their home or land?
Join the discussion — add your two cents to previous Ask DSM Readers questions too!
Maria S.
I haven’t yet, but I have had ideas.
First, we don’t have a privacy fence and on one side someone always comes out every time I barely open the door and they pretend to fiddle with something the whole time we are out there, and disappear as soon as we go in, pathetic! So, I thought about letting someone/a couple park their rv/trailer along the fence for cheap/FREE, ok, so that’s not making money, but we rent and I’m not about to pay a couple thousand dollars for a fence I can’t take with me, and anything would be better to look at then stares when I’m trying to enjoy being outside with my child.
Wouldn’t mind a couple parked on the other side either to possibly muffle the loud music, loud carrying on, and blocking some of the strong exhaust from vehicles left at idle sometimes for hours, marijuana smoke, etc etc etc, at ALL ALL ALL hours of the day and night.
I also thought about charging a small fee and letting people have a garage sale since so many HOA’s won’t allow them unless it’s on their schedule or people don’t have the space, but then that got complicated because what if they had to use the restroom, etc. Sorry, but I don’t want to sit home all day, NOT going to leave the house open, and I basically don’t like people in the house period, especially someone I don’t know.
Jessie
One of the reasons we chose our house when we were hunting is that it has a tiny extra house in the back which we have been able to rent out. We do have to pay a double sewer bill because of the two homes on the property, but the rent from our little cottage makes a dent in the mortgage. We just have to be VERY careful about who we choose to rent to – just had to kick out our current renter since she brought her brother to live with her against the terms of her lease and we didn’t like the look of him. Now the hunt for a good tenent starts again :(
Melody
I LOVE these ideas! I can’t wait to hear more!
Lauralee Hensley
Well if you stay home all day and have a high fenced back yard, you could dog sit for a fee, as long as you don’t keep more dogs that your county permits. Sure you’ll have to do pooper duty everyday. Have the people you dog sit for bring warm and big enough dog houses for their dog(s) and dog toys, food, snacks and feeding bowls. Spend some time with the dogs every hour too to get some exercise or a break from other goings on. If you have children they can help in the caring/playing with the dog(s). Doggy Day Care doesn’t mean you have to have the dogs for 24 hours, just when someone goes to work.
Rhonda
I offer to babysit nights . . there are alot of single parents who work nights and daycares are not open. We have an extra furnished bedroom and it’s the easiest babysitting because the chid just sleeps. And pet babysitting too when people go on vacatoin! I just hung up a sign in our local grocery for both.
Amy
We’ve actually sublet our condo when we’ve had to travel for a while in the summer. We live in Chicago and it’s super easy to find renters here. Also… we currently have a boarder staying in our guest room. With things being so tight right now, it didn’t makes sense for us to have an empty room when we heard someone was looking for a place for 3 months. That’s 900 bucks!
Margaret Anne
I have been considering using my house as a drop site for a CSA. Most farms will grant a free share to the drop site if you find at least 10 other people to buy a share. It would be a great way to get free local produce. Get started by looking at localharvest.org