Home Economics - The Growing Trend
The property market may be stagnant, but a new kind of Home Economics is growing in popularity as householders across the country turn to their dining rooms, gardens, driveways and roofs to home-grow some extra cash.
Property expert, Paul Palmer and British Gas reveal how you can earn more than £30,000 in a year without having to move anywhere:
- If you fancy a brush with fame or think your pad deserves a place in history, one of the biggest income generators is to rent your home out for photoshoots or to film or television production companies, which could see you pocket between £500 and £5,000 per day.
- Think you’ve got the potential to be the next Gordon Ramsay? You could cook up £6,750 profit over three months if you start a supper club in your dining room for a few months a year.
- If you’d rather sit back and relax and let your roof reap rewards for you, why not generate your own electricity from solar panels?
This could earn you an average of £996 a year for 25 years through the Government Feed in Tariff (FiT), selling excess energy back to the grid and reducing your energy bills. Installations of solar photo voltaic (PV) panels have increased more than fourfold between April 2010 and March 2011[1]
- For money-making possibilities on your doorstep consider renting out your driveway, particularly if you live near a sports stadium, transport hub or high street. This could make you, on average, £600 a year.
- If you’re green-fingered, why not grow yourself some extra income in your garden? Whilst letting part of your garden as an allotment could earn you £35 a year, you could instead take a cue from a trend sweeping US soil and reap £4,800 a year by turning your garden into a nursery and propagating seedlings
Paul Palmer, Owner of PRP Consultants Ltd, commented: "A stagnant property market doesn’t have to mean that your property loses its investment potential. An increasing number of British homeowners are finding innovative ways of making money from their property by, for example, renting out a spare room tax free or turning their gardens into nurseries, kitchens into restaurants and roofs into electricity generators.
"The potential for home-grown income is huge: there are 26 million households in the UK and with all of these measures a single home could earn more than £30,000 a year."