New Sharing App Wants To Rent Out Your Backyard, They’ll Throw In A Free Hot Tub
A new sharing app launching in San Francisco will let you rent out your backyard or rooftop by the hour, and will even throw in a free hot tub to entice strangers over to your house.
Nookzy, aims to monetize unused private green space in the city that isn’t available to apartment dwellers who want to party, according to their website.
“Our goal is to make the city more multifaceted and interesting by opening it up for people to use.”
Anyone who doesn’t mind renting out their backyard to a bunch of strangers can sign up with Nookzy and a designer will visit their proposed open space and help decorate the area. Billiard rooms and fancy dinning rooms are also desirable.
The Airbnb of backyards is bringing hot tubs and strangers to your lawn https://t.co/srcs2KkGgG @nookzy #sharingeconomy
— Tim Hughes ??·?? (@Timothy_Hughes) April 8, 2016
Users can then book the space for 30 minutes to 8 hours; if anything goes wrong while strangers party at your house, Nookzy promises to do its best to rectify the situation, according to their website.
“Much of the city goes unused most of the time, and much of the city’s potential never gets tapped into. We believe that even the smallest, humblest corners of the metropolis have an incredible potential to be a source of abundance.”
As an added incentive to rent out your yard, Nookzy is offering to loan users free inflatable hot tubs and saunas to help entice strangers over to your house.
“From little greenhouses to saunas to hot tubs to garden alcoves, Nookzy hosts some of the most stunning and delightful spaces, bookable by the hour.”
The company is only the latest tech startup to jump on the sharing economy; their airbnb-style business model monetizes your private backyard, but also allows residents to make money off their unused space. Whether the app will be popular with neighbors and landlords remains to be seen.
In a city like San Francisco with close to a million people packed into a seven mile square space, the app makes sense. With skyrocketing rental prices making the city more unaffordable by the day, many residents are forced to go without the luxury of an extra room to throw a party in, and that’s where Nookzy comes in.
Whether the app will become popular in less densely populated areas of the country remain to be seen; for now, the new sharing company will focus its efforts on the Bay Area.
“Our platform allows respectful visitors to enjoy the urban nooks that previously had been unavailable to them, while simultaneously improving the spaces themselves.”
After all, why would anyone want to sit quietly in their own home with an empty backyard when strangers could be paying you money to drink beer and party. That would be like taking out your own trash or running your own errands.
The sharing economy doesn’t share the wealth https://t.co/IQjQ4psGIu pic.twitter.com/frdgaAbst6
— Businessweek (@BW) April 6, 2016
With the death of the ride sharing company Tripda, and Homejoy, San Francisco’s on-demand cleaning service, and borrowing service Neighborrow, the sharing economy may be overloaded or the trend may have passed.
Perhaps the idea of making money by letting strangers use a free hot tub in your backyard will be hugely popular.
That’s what co-founder Eric Rogers hoped for when he wrote about the concept on Medium back in February. He compares the backyard concept to The Situationists of the 1960s in Paris, where the spatial experiment of partying in unused shipping containers helped revelers find peace.
What do you think of the latest idea in the sharing economy?
[Photo by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images]
