These homeowners are ‘hacking’ their pools and lawns to earn extra cash

The first time Alexis Hammond rented out her Baltimore home on Peerspace, a marketplace for renting homes and other spaces by the hour, a film crew and a celebrity arrived to shoot a Wawa commercial.

“There was a Baltimore Ravens football player here, so that was very exciting,” Hammond said.

Within the first few weeks of listing her home, Hammond, a psychiatrist, earned enough to cover her mortgage payment that month. Since then, she’s rented out her home on Peerspace for everything from photoshoots to baby showers — starting at $100 an hour.

Purchasing a home has become more difficult for many Americans, but it’s considered one of the best ways to build wealth. And in recent years, homeowners have been presented with an expanding universe of opportunities to monetize these existing assets even further: For those lucky enough to have them, underused pools, backyards, living rooms or driveways can offer untapped riches.

“It’s kind of like passive income, besides some cleaning you have to do,” Hammond said.

Platforms for traditional overnight stays, like Airbnb and Vrbo, have been popular for years. Now, newer offerings allow homeowners to rent out portions of their homes on an even shorter-term basis, often by the hour.

One of these platforms is Swimply, an online marketplace for private pool rentals that launched in 2020, just as the pandemic halted travel and more people looked to get their kicks locally.

Michael Kukuk, an executive at an oil and gas company in Houston, lists his pool on the platform for $60 an hour on weekdays and $67 on weekends. He sometimes nets four to five different bookings in a single weekend during the summer months. He said he has already made $13,000 so far this summer, and his best year was 2022, when he earned $26,000 from the platform.

Renting out his pool has proven to be a lucrative way to use a piece of his property that may not have seen much use otherwise, Kukuk said: “I always wanted to have a pool and I don’t use it as often as I thought I would. The income is great, and I also like being able to share it with people.”

Swimply recently launched passes, which allow homeowners to charge users a monthly fee for access to their pool, tennis court or even home gym, turning their homes into full-blown businesses.

“We’re helping offset costs and generate income,” Derek Callow, Swimply’s CEO, told CNN.

Swimply and Peerspace are just two of the many very-short-term rental marketplaces offering this premise.

As the cost of owning a home has risen, so have the opportunities to monetize it. Peer-to-peer rental marketplaces of all kinds have popped up: RentMyCourt (private tennis and pickleball court rentals), SniffSpot (backyard rentals for dogs), CurbFlip (driveway and parking space rentals) and Vanly (driveway and shower rentals for people traveling in camper vans or RVs).

Younger homebuyers are keenly aware of the opportunity to offset their expenses with extra cash. According to a Zillow survey from last year, 55% of Millennial homebuyers and 51% of Gen Z buyers consider it very or extremely important to have the opportunity to rent out part of their home for extra income while living in it.

Marketplaces are benefiting from that generational shift. Peerspace has been around for a decade — but its listings of active residences jumped 60% over the last year, said founder Rony Chammas.

While the extra income is a focus for many homeowners, some participating in this budding industry say they’ve found something unexpected: community.

Leslie Garabedian said she usually makes between $2,000 and $4,000 a month by renting out her West Caldwell, New Jersey, backyard for dogs and their owners on SniffSpot. Still, she said the circle of dog lovers she has met from the experience has been just as valuable.

“Extra money is great, but that is not my sole focus for doing this,” said Garabedian, manager at a dental practice. “I love the fact that I’m providing to these people and to these dogs. That brings me so much joy.”

Garabedian said that when one of her own dogs passed away last month, other dog owners who rent out her backyard showed up for her.

“There was an outpouring of love and people sending me gifts,” she said. “When everybody has the same focus, which is their dog, you can create amazing relationships.”