Your home is your biggest expense. When you get down to budgeting for your family, you’ll find out that at least 30% of your income goes to maintaining your home—from paying the utility bills to repairing minor fixes around the house. It can be quite overwhelming to realize that you’re barely making enough right now because your company has been affected by the pandemic. So, what can you do? You can find sources of passive income. Start with your own house.
As much as you would like to start a small business, you know it’s not possible right now because you have a job that you’re committed to. Plus, you need the health benefits that come with it. Now more than ever, you are tied to this job because of the medical benefits unless, of course, you can manage to take care of your family’s insurance on your own.
With mortgage payments and credit card bills piling up, you need a quick and easy solution to your financial woes. What assets do you have? At the very least, you have a home that you can turn into a money-generation property. The keyword is rental. You can rent out space because space is what you have right now. Here are some ideas to help you start:
Rent Out a Portion of Your Home
Whether it’s your basement or an extra room, renting out space in your home is the quickest way to earn some extra cash. You can do loft conversions, too, so that you can rent out more space. You can turn your loft into a bedroom for your kids and offer their bedrooms for short-term rental. That will get you as much as $25 a day for short-term rentals. For long-term rentals, you can ask for $400 to $500 a month, depending on your home’s amenities and the size of the bedroom.
Let Tiny House Dwellers Stay on Your Lawn
The tiny house movement is booming, which means plenty of people need a space where they can park their house. Many of them don’t want to stay in RV parks because these are crowded. Those who want to pay extra can stay on your lawn instead. You can give them access to your kitchen and bathroom provided that they pay for it.
For this, you need a bigger lawn, of course. If you can let at least two tiny houses on your property, then you can earn anywhere from $350 to 1,500 a month. You can also offer electric, septic, and water hookups if you have those amenities.
Allow Advertising Agencies to Shoot Commercials in Your Home
If you don’t want to rent out your lawn or the rooms in your house regularly for privacy reasons, there’s another way that you can earn money by renting out space. You can sign up for websites that producers use to scout for homes in the area where they are filming. On average, you can make around $1,500 by renting out your home to producers.
Your homes don’t need to be lavish for producers to notice. Many advertisements are looking for homes that will look realistic in their ads. However, renting out your home for commercial shoots is not going to pay your bills. Treat this more as windfall rather than a source of passive income.
Convert Your Garage Into a Home Office
Since many businesses have to close their offices and shops because of the pandemic and move into smaller spaces, you can convert your garage to house them. Instead of using your garage to store basically your trash (old sofa, broken chairs and tables, and that unused bicycle you thought you’d have time for), you can rent it out as a co-working space or a home office.
More, you can park yourself there, too. If you have been working at home, this minor do-it-yourself project will give you the home office you badly need. You’re hitting two birds with one stone—building a source of extra income and giving yourself a space to work from home.
It takes a bit of work to make your home a money-generating property. Don’t forget that you have to deal with zoning and tax requirements. You are required by law to declare any income you get from renting out a room in your house. Yes, that includes renting out a part of your lawn, too, for tiny house owners. But once these are over, your house can be a good source of income, especially at this time of great financial uncertainty.
