Asset Sharing, as in Planes, Cars, and Now, Rooms in Your House?

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This article in Daily Finance tells us what we have known for awhile: with all the changes in our economy, people are thinking differently, too, about ownership of “things”. Why buy a car, a jet or a vacation home when you can share it? Apparently this trend is moving from Wall Street, where asset sharing has long been popular. Then there’s airbnb. I met the founders of this fabulous website in San Francisco. Guess how they started out? They couldn’t pay their rent. In order to gather enough moola to make the rent payment on time, they posted an ad on Craig’s List during a very busy convention time in San Francisco when all the hotels were filled, offering their home for lease. That weekend they sub-leased their apartment and made enough to cover a whole month’s rent. Often, it turns out, the greatest creative ideas are created out of sheer survival need!

If you have a second home, you can turn that into a third home over at 3rdHome.com. But with airbnd, all you need is a spare room or even a tugboat! If you are willing to rent it out and have strangers in your home, property owners only pay a 3% commission on any completed bookings. The listing is free. There are now more than 70,000 listings on the site. And as we learned in San Francisco, VC (venture capitalists) have been investing heavily in airbnb in recent months, so an IPO in the next year or two isn’t out of the question.

That’s right. These guys went from not being able to cover the monthly rent check to maybe pulling in several million dollars. Times are very different. We are a Renter Nation now. And that means that some of us will even take in boarders!

And then get rich!

Candy Evans

Candy Evans