youRianda Jubian is preparing to organize a birthday party for a one-year-old boy. The event will take place in her backyard, in Sylvania Waters, a Sydney suburb, but it’s not for Jubian’s own son. Rather, the party is thrown by a group of 22 strangers who pay $80 an hour for the use of their pool at home. She will greet them when they arrive, explain a few rules (no shelling, diving or peeing in the pool please), then she will go inside and close the blinds until the booking is complete. So does Jubian feel, err, a little weird about that?
“Not at all,” she says. “Actually, I’m proud because I have this beautiful place… I’ve worked hard for all of this, so why not share it?”
Jubian is one of a growing number of Australians taking the sharing economy to new places. While the likes of Airbnb have been around for a decade, changing the way we vacation and drawing some (warranted) criticism along the way, the past year has seen more unusual entries to the market.
Today, it is possible to do much more than simply rent out your vacation home to travelers. If you’re lucky enough to have a private tennis court, boat, music studio, rooftop, or large outdoor area at your disposal, you can now borrow them by the hour while you take care of business elsewhere.
For platforms that facilitate these transactions, the pitch for owners is the ability to generate easy passive income, an attractive proposition in the current cost of living crisis. The extra money certainly spoke to Jubian, who included his group on a platform called Swimply when it launched in Australia in November 2022.
“I thought I’d give it a shot because it would be a good way to cover the [cost of] pool maintenance,” says Jubian. “And ever since, it’s been a blessing to tell you the truth.” She declined to reveal exactly how much she’s earned since she put her group up for sale, but says it’s proving to be a “lucrative income.” So far, guests have ranged from families looking to make a splash and gather in a space bigger than their own, to those packing cameras: the one-year-old’s birthday party, for example, is being hosted by “influencers from Instagram” more interested in the photographic potential of the pool than the actual swimming.
Glamor is not a requirement for the new fringes of the sharing economy. For the last year, Greg Casson, who lives in Windsor Hills on the outskirts of Sydney, has been renting out his backyard, not to Instagram influencers, but to dogs. Casson and his wife, both semi-retired, were googling ways to earn extra income when they came across Sniffspace, a platform that connects pet owners with private spaces for their four-legged friend to run (something that has a in high demand, as the size or temperament of some dogs means they are not suitable for public parks).
While almost any safe backyard can be rented at Sniffspace, Casson’s wife took the ball and ran with it. She created a special 1,500-square-foot dog park, complete with a wading pool for puppies and a tunnel made of painted tractor tires for the dogs to run around. It’s quite something, says Casson.
“It got a little over the line…it became a bit like the Opera House.”
The couple now rent it out for $25 an hour, and estimate they earn between $100 and $150 a week when the weather is nice.
But renting out your property is not without risk. While peer-to-peer rental platforms often offer liability insurance and property damage coverage, not all possible scenarios are covered. Sniffspace insurance, for example, extends to guests but not to dogs themselves, nor to damage caused by a dog. And the process of getting paid on an insurance claim if something goes wrong can be complicated, just ask Lucy.
In 2018, Lucy, who only asked that her first name be used, began renting her car on Car Next Door, a popular car-sharing platform. She had just moved out of the house, was earning minimum wage, and was desperately looking for any way to make money. At first, things went well.
“They guaranteed me that I would earn two thousand dollars a year. I was like, ‘That’s crazy,’” Lucy recalls. “Within the first month, I made about $500. And honestly, I was on top of the world.”
Then, about eight months into his stint on the platform, he had a user rent his car for a full week. With the vehicle still not returned after two weeks, Car Next Door informed Lucy that he had been in an accident and that they were taking the vehicle to a repair shop to repair the damage. In emails seen by Guardian Australia, this was described as a “minor incident”.
“Then I get a call from the mechanic who says, ‘So when do you want to come pick up your belongings?’ I was like, ‘What?’ He says, ‘Yeah, well, it’s been cancelled. Someone led him down a flight of stairs. It’s totally unusable,’” he recalls. “Turns out they must have taken it for a full ride, they went up some stairs with a bollard and brought it down.” The entire bottom of the car was torn off.
Resolving the matter was not easy. After contesting Car Next Door’s initial assessment of $14,000, she received a second offer of a $15,500 balloon payment from the company, 20 days after being alerted to the accident.
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But the person who rented the car had used a fake ID and recorded several speeding tickets, which Lucy had trouble contesting because the renter could not be identified. The fake ID also, coincidentally, had the same last name as Lucy. “And then there was this weird vibe where [Car Next Door] They were like, ‘Do you know this person?’”
Between negotiating speeding tickets with Service NSW and linking up with Car Next Door, it took another 50 days to get paid for the vehicle.
When Lucy put the car on the deck, it was new and had cost her $22,000. She now wishes she had pushed for a higher payment. But the worst part was the stress of waiting to find out if the claim would be successfully processed.
A spokesperson for Uber, which acquired Car Next Door in 2022, confirmed Lucy’s story, saying that since Car Next Door relaunched as Uber Car Share, they have been “investing in technology and security resources across the platform, to improve the experience of owners and borrowers”.
In a statement, Uber said: “Before someone can rent a car using our platform, they must submit an application that includes the information and documents we need to perform an identity verification and credit check. Computer-based facial recognition isn’t perfect, so we also have a team of specialists dedicated to reviewing each app to detect fraudulent apps. On the rare occasions that someone with a fraudulent ID is approved, we have processes in place to disable their account and ensure that they cannot purchase any more vehicles on the platform.”
“In the event a car is damaged beyond repair in an accident or stolen and not recovered, the owner will receive an amount equal to the car’s current ‘market’ value as advised by an independent appraiser. If the owner does not agree with the market value established by the independent appraiser, he can request that it be reviewed again and provide any additional information about the value of the car”.
Says Lucy, “It wasn’t a good feeling towards the end… But the gag of having someone drive my car up a flight of stairs has lasted longer than the sadness I felt at not having the car.”
“And in the end, I guess they paid me over two thousand dollars the first year.”
Despite her experience, Lucy says she would still recommend the car sharing platform to others, but only if “you’ve had a shitty car.”
Casson isn’t worried about things going wrong.
“I haven’t had any problems,” he says. “I always find that pet owners are generally the kindest people. And they are the most affectionate, they want to take care of your garden”.
The possibility of disaster aside, Jubian says the discomfort of having a bunch of strangers in his backyard wears off pretty quickly.
When someone books, “you can’t really scan people beforehand because it’s really just names,” he says. “But when they come here, it’s not a problem at all… As soon as they come in and meet me, they’re not strangers anymore.”
