The Daily Advertiser : 6 July 2009- by Daisy Huntly

Do you have so much space you don’t know what to do with it? The answer according to Wagga men Nathon Irvin, Damon Russell and Andy Henderson, is to rent it out.

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’.