How to Rent Out Your Stuff for Extra Cash This Summer

I love peer to peer rental platforms! If you own something, you can rent it out to others when you’re not using it and make some spare cash. And if you want to use something, you can rent stuff instead of buying stuff. 

Owners make money. Renters save money. Sharing stuff = less waste. It’s a win/win/win!

We’re all familiar with AirBnB, VRBO and house-swapping platforms. But did you know you can rent out your stand-up paddle board when you’re not using it? Maybe you’ve got spare tools in your shed you rarely use or a closet full of nice dresses that you barely wear… Peer to peer sharing platforms let you rent them out for extra cash.

I recently went down an Internet rabbit-hole and found a whole bunch of apps and sites I didn’t know existed. So I thought I’d make a list and share them with you all in case you can make some extra money renting out your stuff this summer (or save money by renting other people’s stuff!)

**Fair warning: Not every site or app is available in every country/city. Also make sure you check out and are comfortable with all the terms and conditions before signing up for anything!**

How to Rent Out Your Garage, Back Yard, or Swimming Pool

Swimming pool (~$50 per hour): Swimply is for neighborhood pools and hot tubs! If you’ve got a pool at home that you’re not using much this summer, consider renting it out hourly on the days you’re not using it.

Backyard doggy play area (~$15 per hour): If you have a large backyard that could make a good doggy play area, you can list it for rent on SniffSpot. There are a ton of pet owners that live in apartment complexes who would love to bring their pet to your place. (Just make sure they clean up the poop – or maybe you can charge extra for pooper scooper service?)

Home storage space or yard space ($$ varies per size — monthly income):  Have spare room in your basement? Maybe an extra large driveway? Or perhaps you have extra space in your closet? Rent it out on one of these sites so people can pay you instead of buying a storage unit.

  • Neighbor lets you list your available home storage to locals. Car/boat storage, closet storage or just empty rooms. Like being a landlord at a storage facility, but for people’s random belongings at your home.
  • Store At My House helps you list your empty space, book and accept payments via their site, and start making monthly income quickly. :)

How to Rent Out Your Garden

Backyard meditation space ($20 – $50 per hour): Healing Gardens is one of the coolest platforms I found! If you own a beautiful garden or outside deck area, you can rent it out to people who can work remotely there, host a yoga class, or just sit in silence and meditate. People in busy cities LOVE to relax in quiet and hidden yards, so let them pay you to sit in yours!!

Planting or growing space ($$ varies per yard size): The site Shared Earth lets you list your unused residential garden space to people who want to grow veggies, flowers, etc. (Just make sure they’re not growing anything that’s illegal in your area.)

Another platform for gardens is YardYum. They connect landowners with gardeners who pay monthly to rent out gardening space. 

Ways to Rent Out Your Land for Camping

If you thought my advice on investing in raw land was crap and you went ahead and bought some anyway… I have good news! Here are a few websites that will help you list your land to campers and RV-ers so you can generate some rental income:

Land for camping ($20-$100+ per night):

  • HipCamp is a growing community of nature lovers who camp and “glamp” on private land. “Anyone with a property that helps people connect with nature can be a Hipcamp Host!”
  • Tentrr is a newer platform and is growing in popularity now that the pandemic is letting up. Many public campsites are already full this summer so campers might love to check out your land instead!
  • HomeCamper covers a handful of U.S. states, and some international locations, such as Spain, Scotland, Wales and Australia. They also facilitate gardens, pools, and camper rentals.
  • Campspace seems to be primarily for the UK, Germany and Netherlands. Anyone own camp land out there?

How to Rent Out Your Car, Motorbike, Boat or RV

Boats and watercrafts (~$500+ per day, or ~$1000+ with a captain): With the site BoatSetter you can rent out your boat of any size when you’re not using it. You can also include yourself as a private captain and charge a whole lot more.

Also, GetMyBoat is a popular peer to peer rental site with ability to list worldwide. Both these sites also cover jetskiis, sailboats, pontoon boats and some water sports equipment.

Rent out your motorbike (~$60+ per day): Here are a few apps and websites that let you rent out your motorbike for extra money. Potential renters are vetted by the apps, they handle the security deposit and also offer various insurance coverage options.

  • RidersShare: Apparently some of the top hosts make more than $6k per month renting out their bikes to private riders!
  • TwistedRoad: It takes about 5 minutes to sign up and list your bike and then you can start accepting rentals and earning extra cash.
  • EagleShare: The parent organization here is Eagle Rider (I’ve personally rented from them before), but EagleShare is for people listing their own and unique bikes for rent. The rental platform handles both company owned and privately owned bikes.

Rent out your car (~$80 – $200+ per day): Car sharing is becoming incredibly popular. For people who don’t drive their car much, or have a second car sitting around, consider renting it out on one of these sites…

  • Turo is probably the most popular site for car rentals. Doesn’t matter if you have an old shitty Volkswagen Beetle or a fancy new Audi… Someone will probably want to rent it for the right price!
  • Getaround has more than 2 million users in the U.S.! If you’re a car owner with multiple cars you can list them all to make some extra money when you’re not using them.
  • HyreCar is interesting because they seem to be specific to Uber and Lyft rentals. So you could purchase a fleet of cars and rent them out to Uber and Lyft drivers. Kind of like setting up your own business!

Rent out your RV (~$100 – $200+ per night): If you own a camper van, motorhome, or a fancy tricked-out RV you can list it for rent on one of these awesome RV rental platforms…

  • Outdoorsy lets you list your RV rental for free and rent whenever you want, with full renter verification and vehicle insurance options.
  • RVezy can help you get daily or weekly rentals to make extra income from your unused camper.
  • RVShare has killer reviews, and most users report making more than $2,000 per month from renting out their camping vehicles. Some make a lot more!
  • Camplify is for you Aussies out there. 🇦🇺 🇦🇺 🇦🇺

How to Rent Out a Parking Space

It’s amazing how much parking costs these days. If you own a parking spot in a desirable work location, or even if you live close to a sporting stadium and have spare car spots, you can rent them out daily or monthly for extra money with these sites:

Parking Space (~$20+ per day or up to ~$300 monthly): 

  • Parqex is one of the biggest private marketplaces for parking spaces. You can choose your pricing, availability, etc and manage bookings through the app.
  • Spacer aims to get you monthly rent for your unused parking space. They take a small cut from the monthly fee when you’ve secured a renter.
  • CurbFlip handles all the lease agreement stuff, money collection and payments when you list your parking space for rent. You can rent your spot out hourly or monthly for extra income.
  • SpotHero is available in most major cities and also caters to people who have larger spaces and can handle business fleets of cars.
  • SpotOn is local to San Francisco for any of you people with spots up there. Busy cities are where the big money is made!

How to Rent Out Your Clothes for Extra Money

Fair warning… clothing rental is mostly for high end designer stuff — of which my wife and I own ZERO. 😂  But maybe you do!!? For any of y’all who have some stylish clothes hanging in your closet, try renting them out on one of these platforms:

Rent out your clothes ($$ varies greatly):

  • StyleLend is mostly for dresses, shoes, bags and accessories. They do 7 day lending so the renter has time for fitting if they’re wanting clothes for a specific date or event.
  • Tulerie is a peer to peer clothing app that helps people rent your higher end designer apparel. Instead of buying clothes themselves, they can rent from you to see how they like it first.
  • RentMyWardrobe lets you “put cash in your pocket with what’s in your closet!” What a great tag line.

Make Extra Cash Renting Out Baby Gear

Baby gear is a pain in the a$$ to travel with — or so I’m told — so why not help out people visiting your city by renting gear for their little ones instead of lugging it on the plane. Here are a couple sites you can rent out your baby gear for extra money:

Rent out baby stuff ($$ pricing varies depending on the equipment/service):

  • BabyQuip lets parents travel light and travel happy! When you sign up as a Quality Provider you can rent out your *safe and clean* baby gear in your city. 
  • Rents4Baby is great for people who have a ton of baby stuff, or want to start their own rental business. Rentals are a growing trend, so jump on the bandwagon. :)

Where to Rent Out Your Tools and Equipment:

If you own unique tools that are perfect for a short job, consider renting them out to people in need. The following platforms let you rent out small tools, power tools, tractors and large special equipment, too.

Tools and equipment ($$ depends on your gear): 

  • Sparetoolz is an app made to connect tool owners and tool renters. Just snap some photos of your spare tools, set your rates, and manage bookings through the app.
  • FriendWithA is a much broader peer to peer site but it has a large tool section covering a bunch of random tools you can rent out.
  • BURLY allows you to list and rent out anything from small drills and chainsaws all the way up to mid-sized machines like forklifts and diggers.
  • RentMyEquipment covers Atlanta, Nashville and a few select cities across the U.S. for household and large yard rental tools.
  • DOZR is for HUGE construction machines. Anyone got a bulldozer or farm tractor they want to rent out?

How to Rent Out Sports Gear, Bikes and Music Equipment

Do you have barely used sports gear but don’t want to sell it quite yet? What about a guitar sitting in your living room that you rarely play? Rent them out on these sites:

Bikes, surfboards, guitars (~$20-$100+ per day):

  • FRetish is a site dedicated to instruments, music equipment, and recording space. While renting your stuff out, you might even meet some cool people to start a band with. ;)
  • Spinlister helps people list and rent their bikes! Road bikes, mountain bikes, or even fixed gear bikes get decent rental rates in various locations. They also have listings for snowboards, skis, paddle boards and surfboards.
  • FriendwithA has sections for electronics, music and video equipment, drones, and various sporting gear like skateboards and scooters. Rent your stuff out for extra money this summer.

Other Ways to Do Peer to Peer Rentals

More cool sites I found while searching around…

  • Loanables helps you rent out all types of random stuff like camping gear, party rentals, trailers, inflatable movie projectors, or even bouncy castles.
  • Rentah is for any general item. You can make money renting out your sewing machine, kayak, or rollerblades.
  • Rent Not Buy has a number of categories you can list your random items under. Fair warning, this site seems a little basic and doesn’t have great search features, but still has a big user base!

Rent Out Your Friendship?

Lastly, if you are particularly good at companionship, know how to listen to people, or are good at partying and hanging out with crowds, you can rent yourself out, as a friend!

Rent A Friend lets you list yourself as a friend for hire. They claim you can make $3,000 to $8,000 a month if you work full time! Hmmm… 🤔 Anyone want to hire me?

Lastly, instead of renting out your stuff, you might just consider getting rid of it completely using selling apps. That way you can pocket a larger amount of cash upfront, and not have to deal with people!

Happy Friday and have fun whatever you get up to this summer!

Cheers,

Joel

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5 Comments

  1. Leticia July 9, 2021 at 9:56 AM

    Cool! I love the idea. I guess most of my stuff is not in very good condition to rent. However, I have rented our house through airbnb for more than 10 years, I have loaned our home through home exchange and used other people houses. All great experiences. A great thing for the environment. I’ll check some of the options you posted. I looked out of curiosity the rent a friend one in my area, after all I have a free afternoon… it’s a bit creepy though, I have to say.

    Leticia

    1. Joel July 9, 2021 at 10:53 AM

      Yep, I know what you mean about seeming creepy! Also with COVID and such that adds another layer of weirdness!

      Congrats on the AirBnB success! So good to hear!

  2. Teigh July 10, 2021 at 7:07 PM

    Thanks for the list. I have another suggestion: kitchen rental. Good for those people who have cooking and baking side-hustles who may need a kitchen area with more space and better equipment.

    1. Joel July 11, 2021 at 10:08 AM

      Awesome! I’ve heard about this for small businesses – I think “cloud kitchens” are becoming popular too for several restaurants to share resources.

  3. Jack Smith July 28, 2022 at 1:16 PM

    I’ve had a lot of success using ULend.Me (www.ulend.me) to rent out some of my gently used items. The website is easy to use and fun! It’s definitely worth taking a look at.