How To Make Money From A Spare Room – 8 Best Ideas!
If you look up the best passive income ideas, you usually find ideas that require starting capital.
For example, popular strategies include investing in dividend-paying stocks or starting some sort of online business.
And, while these ideas are legit ways to diversify your income, sometimes, you don't have a lot of starting cash to leverage.
Thankfully, there are numerous ways to make money with a spare room, letting you turn empty space into a new income stream.
If you're looking for ways to make money from your spare room, this is absolutely the guide for you.
Let's get to it.
Looking for other beginner-friendly passive income ideas? Checkout:
- Fundrise – Invest in income-generating real estate starting with just $10!
- Arrived – Invest in profitable rental properties through Arrived!
How To Make Money From A Spare Room
Renting out things for cash isn't a new concept. In fact, companies like Airbnb have let people do this with their homes for years at this point.
The variety of options out there is great news for side hustlers however. Ultimately, if you want to make money renting out unused space, there are more options to do so than ever before!
1. Rent Out Spare Room With Neighbor
One of the easiest ways to make money with a spare room is to use Neighbor to rent out the extra space to people.
Neighbor is basically like Airbnb but for storage space. And it's an excellent passive income side hustle if you have some extra space in your house or on your property that you're not using.
As a Neighbor host, you can make money renting out unused spaces like:
- Spare rooms
- Basements
- Attics
- Parking spots
- Garages
- Sheds
You get to set your own rental rates as a Neighbor host. Furthermore, you create rules for when renters can come and access their belongings which prevents people from dropping by too often or at weird times.
Becoming a Neighbor host is free, and you get paid monthly from the people who rent your spare storage space.
To make money, Neighbor takes 4.9% plus $0.30 for every transaction, but you're still making free money at the end of the day as a host.
Many Neighbor listings charge around $20 to $100+ per month, and if you live in a large city, it's definitely easier to find customers.
Overall, Neighbor is definitely one of the best ways to make money renting spare rooms or other storage space, especially because it's free.
Become a Neighbor host today or read my complete Neighbor review for all the details.
2. Make Money Renting Rooms
Another straightforward option to make money with a spare room is to rent it out to other people.
Airbnb is the leader in this space, and becoming a host is completely free like with Neighbor.
Most Airbnb hosts pay a 3% fee, but that's really your only expense here. If you get a handful of bookings per month, that's easily a few extra hundred dollars in income that's rather low effort.
Several people I know run Airbnbs with a spare bedroom. For them, it's an easy way to make $200 a month or so with just a few nights of bookings.
And some Airbnb hosts even automate large portions of the process.
While I've lived in Dubai and Colombia, I encountered so many scenarios where I checked into my room with a lock box and key and never even met the host.
Furthermore, hosts often hire cleaning staff to tidy up after guests, so there are ways to automate this sort of business.
But even if you rent out a spare room or basement for some occasional extra cash, this is a decent side hustle.
And Airbnb isn't your only option. Websites like VRBO and Rent Like A Champion also let you rent spare rooms for money or even entire rental units.
3. Turn A Spare Room Into An Office
This is one of the more creative ideas to make money with a spare room, on this list but it's honestly my favorite and something I'm personally doing right now.
In a nutshell, this idea to make money with an empty room takes two steps:
- Create and operate some sort of business from the space to eventually make money
- Write off some of your office space and business expenses when filing your taxes
You'd be amazed at what this combo can do.
For example, I make most of my income from freelance writing and from my blog. And I have two legal businesses, one for freelance writing and one for my media properties.
This is what my at-home office space currently looks like:
This stuff might sound meaningless, but it honestly adds up quickly. And all of this from putting a small desk from Ikea in my kitchen and going through some legal steps!
Anyway, the point is, one more entrepreneurial way to make money with a spare room is to run some sort of business from it.
This could be blogging, YouTube, or even something like selling POD products on Etsy.
I also like this idea because your online business has way more upside income potential than just renting out storage space or a spare room for some quick cash.
You can check out my post on how to earn money online as a beginner for even more ideas to get started!
4. Get A Housemate
House hacking is a very popular tactic, and the idea is to bring on roommates to help cover some or all of your mortgage.
This strategy to make money from a spare room has immediate upside; you get a tenant and you're hopefully looking at 12 months or more of steady rental income unless something goes wrong and the tenant leaves.
The downside to this is you're now living with roommates, which can create problems if you have different schedules or definitions of what a “clean” kitchen sink really looks like.
Personally, I wouldn't pursue this option unless I bought a duplex and could rent out a private basement apartment and never really see the other person.
Some landlords do this to great success, and there are actually lots of cool series on YouTube about how to make money with rental units.
This video from YouTuber Shelby Grosch is very insightful and covers the cost and profit breakdown from a duplex he's living in:
Overall, this is a very sensible tactic to save more money. And your house can turn into a pretty powerful investment, and you can also rent it out fully down the line for extra cash.
5. Rent To Foreign Exchange Students
Like Airbnb or other rental properties, another way to make money renting out rooms is to rent them to foreign exchange students.
According to Student Room Stay, hosting a foreign exchange student can earn anywhere from $30 per day to $1,400 per month.
This is a massive range, and to be fair, most host families I've ever met do it for the experience and to earn some good karma rather than doing it for the money.
But hey, if you can land a paid arrangement and host an interesting student, that's a win-win!
6. Rent Out An Event Space
One niche idea for making money with space rooms or properties is to rent out the space for events.
For example, side gig apps like Peerspace let you rent out spaces for things like:
- Meetings
- Photo shoots
- Video shoots
- Events
- Art shows
- Coworking spaces
Granted, you need a pretty unique or interesting space for most of these ideas to work.
However, I can see a world in which you transform your room into a podcast studio or photo shoot room and find renters on Peerspace, especially if you live in a big city.
In the future, I want to have a home with a room for filming YouTube videos, so this sort of idea is what I want to try down the line.
Peerspace is free for hosts as well, although it takes a 15% fee from bookings which is pretty steep.
7. Grow Or Raise Something
Alright, not that type of growing! But one super creative way you can make money with extra space in your house is to grow and sell something with the space.
Obviously, gardens are an easy option here, and you can probably save extra money every month by growing more of your own food.
I also have friends who turned unused backyard space into a garden and chicken coop, and they make extra cash by selling eggs.
But you can get super crazy here. I mean, in this Vice YouTube video, one side hustler shares how he makes $45,000 raising and selling fish from his apartment.
This guy has 50 tanks in a one bedroom apartment in Toronto, and he raises 3,000 to 5,000 fish at any given time!
The fact he makes $50,000 a month or so just by selling fish is also pretty astounding. Talk about a wacky way to make money.
8. Create A Workshop
One final way you can earn money from extra space in your house is to turn that space into a workshop to produce something.
When I was in college, someone on my street did this with the entire garage. He made and sold wooden bird houses to people in my city and at farmers market, and it was a pretty decent side business for him.
You could do something similar with almost any craft or product if you have the skills. Alternatively, you could try to flip your money by buying and reselling merchandise if you're interested in retail arbitrage.
The point is, don't be afraid to use that extra space to launch a small business from your home!
Extra Reading – The Best Ways To Make $10K In A Week.
Tips For Making Money From Spare Rooms
Now that you know how to make money with spare rooms, let's cover a few tips you can use to help this passive income idea succeed.
- Explore Multiple Options: There are so many rental platforms out there, so who says you can't make money with Neighbor, Airbnb, and with several other companies at the same time?
- Track Expenses: A rental business is like any other business, so make sure you accurately track additional income and expenses so you know how much you're actually making.
- Consider Taxes: As mentioned, certain rental expenses can serve as tax deductions, especially if you're running a business from part of your home.
Extra Reading – How To Make $500 Dollars Per Day.
Final Thoughts
Renting out your extra space for money is one of the simplest ways to create a new income source from nothing.
And, if you get creative, there are so many ways to get started.
I mean, people even rent out land for camping or farming, and if some guy can raise $45,000 worth of fish per year in his one bedroom apartment, the sky really is the limit.
Just remember to track your expenses and to experiment with several rental options to drum up as much business as possible.
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