Shed a nice little earner

Empty driveways, garages and sheds around Perth are being turned into cash cows.

Scores of people are pocketing up to $500 a month by renting out empty space they think could be useful to someone else.

SpaceOut.com.au is a website the matches “SpaceOwners” with “SpaceSeekers”.

Founder Damon Russell said. “When home and business owners realise that their unused space could be earning them a regular rental income with little or no effort, it is a real no-brainer”

Bayswater resident Carol Marshall is hoping to make some extra cash out of her back shed. She is asking #90 a week to rent it.

Mr Russell said the idea cam to him when he needed somewhere to store his belongings while he went overseas.

Channel 9′s A Current Affair program has run a series of reports over the last few weeks about the methods Australian National Car Parks (ANCP) seem to be using to intimidate people into paying “fines” for failing to get a ticket at public Car Parks they manage.

It was alleged that ANCP take advantage of the fact that people are often unaware that they need to get a ticket – even though the car parks are clearly signed as “2 Hours Free Parking”.  It seems that if you fail to get a ticket (even if you stay for less than 2 hrs) ANCP staff have been issuing ‘liquidated damages’  demands for $66 – which quickly escalate to $88 and then $163 if you don’t pay in time – in some cases followed by a NOTICE OF INTENTION TO SUE.

However, as a private company, ANCP does not have legal authority to administer fines.

What the law says:

A DRIVER using a private car park enters into a contract with the operator to abide by the terms and conditions stated on signs (which must be prominently displayed).

Under contract law, parties are not entitled to impose penalties for breach of contract but can seek “liquidated damages” – which are defined as a reasonable estimate of the damage suffered as a result of the contract being breached. If a court finds the estimate is not reasonable it is defined as a penalty and becomes invalid.

If damages are sought by a private car-park operators but resisted by the driver the issue may end up in court, however, the company then has to demonstrate how the damage it suffered equals the damages it is seeking.

There is considerable doubt whether ANCP could justify the $66 damages they have been demanding.

But It’s all happened before :

This is certainly not the first time this type of practice has been reported.

In April 2007, The Age (Crackdown on car parking ‘bullies ) reported similar practices by Australian National Car Parks and highlighted that a number of Victorian Councils had banned (or were considering bans) on ANCP operating within their regions.

Moreland Council, which includes Brunswick, Coburg and Pascoe Vale, accused Australian National Car Parks of bullying behaviour, and Darebin Council, which includes Northcote and Preston, had asked the company to stop handing out tickets.

At the time ANCP was being investigated by the NSW Office of Fair Trading and had also been reported to Consumer Affairs Victoria.

In 2006, then NSW fair trading minister Diane Beamer urged drivers to “exercise extreme caution” in ANCP car parks because the company could have been engaging in “improper, misleading and deceptive conduct”.

In October 2008, the Herald Sun (Supermarket shoppers not legally obliged to pay parking fines ) reported that tens of thousands of Victorians had paid up for shopping centre parking fines that they were not legally obliged to pay.

On 10th October, Consumer Affairs Victoria issued a state-wide alert warning motorists that Care Park Pty Ltd had no power to issue fines or impose penalties at “free” supermarket car parks.  Also at that time Australian National Car Parks was at the centre of a case designed to test the legality of its demands, and a third company that issued demand notices – Parking Infringements Victoria – was under investigation by Consumer Affairs.

A Facebook group called The People vs Australian National Car Parks -  has been established with the aim of helping with information and advice.  There are also plenty of active forums discussing the issues, but consensus seems to be that if you do get issued with one of these demand notices – don’t panic and don’t lose sleep over it – simply throw the notice away.

Workers on park avenue

Fed-up city workers are ditching expensive CBD carparks for cheaper backyard spots.

Brisbane was ranked as the seventh moist expensive city in the world for parking in the most recent Colliers International Global CBD Parking Rate survey, with motorists having to pay a median monthly cost of $596 for parking.

The survey found Brisbanites were spending more on their parking than those living in Tokyo or New York.

But a local website is revolutionising city parking by matching desperate motorists with inner-city tenants who have room to spare in carparks backyards and garages.

SpaceOut.com.au advertises private car spaces for rent, and places ads for commuters hoping to find cheap car parks close to their work.

This morning the site offered an undercover parking space in South Brisbane for $50 a week or $160 a month

Meanwhile a space with double-swipe security protection at Spring Hill was being advertised for the bargain price of #240 a month.

Spaceout’s Andy Henderson said many private carpark providers were inner-city residents who lived and socialised in the city and chose not to have a car.

“We’re getting a lot more inner-city accommodation, and a lot of those, for example are being filled by foreign students who don’t have a car.” he said.

“They see this as an opportunity to subsidise their rent.“

If you have any spare space like a spare room, sunroom, shed or garage, you could earn a lazy $100 a week by putting it up for rent as space.  Lots of travellers like a place to store their stuff and commercial storage is getting expensive.

It’s a tenant without the hassle says Roget Hawley, who told Value Hunter a few months ago that he had a two-car garage in Brisbane’s north-side, but with only one car, and decided to offer the space for rent on www.spaceout.com.au.  It’s now earning him $180 a month.

Today’s article is a follow-up on a piece that Jane Hansen did in August this year where SpaceOut was featured on Value Hunter’s “Cash in Your Spare Space” article.

SpaceOut was featured in today’s Sunday Newspapers (Australian Wide) in the highly regarded  Value Hunter section.  Value Hunter is a consumer advocacy column that has been appearing since the beginning of 2009 in all News Ltd Sunday newspapers. The Value Hunter Column provides useful, simple, and  practical information about how to make and save money.

Following is a transcript of of the Value Hunter Column – “Cash in your Spare Space” , by Jane Hansen – published Sunday 30 August, 2009.

Cash in your Spare Space

The Australian-first concept of helping people rent space has been launched in the form of spaceout.com.au a free service for those trying top let or find storage space.

Mr Russell, when looking to travel overseas, decided that the average home could be turned into a small goldmine while providing a cheaper alternative for those trying to store their things.
“We launched around January and had a re-launch three weeks ago. We had a really good look around the world to see what else was out there, (the US) has a similar concept, but we couldn’t find anything really in Australia,” he said.

While originally about space in general, feedback and an increase in demand has added a whole other dimension with designated areas for storage space, office space, and parking spaces, and the market has really opened up in metropolitan areas.
” We find in the city areas where space is such a commodity, (they) are the first areas where we’ve found a strong market. Markets like Wagga might take a bit longer, might not be as big a need,” Mr Irvin said.

“There’s plenty of people around here who have got 5 acres with plenty of space out the back. It’s a great way to make a bit of money on the side.”
The brains behind the initiative describe themselves as an “IT whiz in love with his work’, ‘a marketing guru with his finger on the national pulse’, and a “self proclaimed ‘generalist’ travelling overseas who couldn’t afford to store his things with a traditional storage facility’.