Avery: “Another episode of The Short-term Show. You guys ask a lot of questions about how to make more money off your short-term rentals. Lots of ways to do that—you know, revenue management, things like that. But our guest today, Joseph Woodberry, is the CEO and founder of Neighbor and has a few other ways, like another scenario where you can make more money off your short-term rentals and your long-term rentals, for that matter. But I’ll let him explain that. How’s it going, Joseph?”

Joseph: “Good, how are you doing?”

Avery: “I am doing awesome. Sorry, guys, I’m still a little sick sounding, just like last week, so sorry about that. But, uh, Joseph, you’ve got a really cool concept here I want to hear all about, and our listeners are going to be excited to hear about it. But first, will you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?”

Joseph: “Sure, yeah. We started Neighbor about six or seven years ago, and it really started when we had the need ourselves. My co-founder needed storage, and he couldn’t find any storage options near him. He looked into getting a storage unit, and they were incredibly expensive. So he ended up storing with a friend in their garage, and he had such a good experience, he just thought, ‘Why doesn’t everyone do this?’ It was more affordable, closer to his home, and he was able to save a lot of money. There’s got to be empty space in every neighborhood in the country. Why doesn’t the money we pay for storage go to these people that own property, instead of some storage facility on the outskirts of town?

So that’s where we got started, and just an overview of where we’ve come—we’ve grown that to almost every city in all 50 states. I think we’re the only storage operator now in all 50 states in the country.”

Avery: “Wow, okay. I mean, every single state, all 50 states?”

Joseph: “Yeah, almost every city in all 50 states.”

Avery: “Geez, that’s a big company. Congratulations.”

Joseph: “Well, it resonates with people. People are looking for ways to earn passive income, and storage is one of those. You know, if you look at the gig economy, a lot of them require a decent amount of work. You go drive around for Uber or you drive around for DoorDash or Instacart—those are kind of full-time jobs. I think the beauty of Airbnb was there came along this platform where I can own property, and that property can work for me, and I can have a day job. I don’t have to spend my time on Airbnb. Now, Airbnb’s other short-term rentals still require a decent amount of maintenance, right? Your guests are coming and going, they’re short-term by nature, and you often work with a management company. Storage just takes that concept that Airbnb pioneered one step further, where you can have someone’s boat sitting on the side of your garage, or your RV pad, and you’re doing literally no work for months and months on end, and it’s just depositing into your account. So I think that’s why it’s grown so quickly—because of how passive it is.”

Avery: “Yeah, that is pretty passive. So it could be any covered or uncovered part of your property? Like just uncovered driveway space?”

Joseph: “That’s right. If you think about it, someone may buy a camper trailer, or have an extra car, or have a boat, and they don’t have space to put it at their house. But they look across the street, and their neighbor’s got a big RV pad, and they don’t own a boat. So why not just put it right across the street? It’s a pain to have it halfway across town in some storage facility, when you could just have it in your neighborhood. Short-term rentals—this is especially pertinent to those because the people coming to stay aren’t typically using those parts of the property. If there’s a shed in the back, no one staying for a few days is using that shed. There’s often an extra garage stall or part of the house, and that can be earning money even when there are no tenants in the actual space.”

Avery: “Yeah, that’s really interesting and timely for me because I’ve been kind of shopping for a new short-term rental in a market where there are a lot of detached garages. So, you know, in an attached garage, I might just let our guests use that, but if it’s detached and way over there, it might make sense to use it. The guest is probably not going to go park their car over there and then walk up. They’re probably just going to park right in front of the house and walk up. So that is smart. And I’ve been looking at what I can do with a detached garage at this short-term rental, so that’s really smart. So, how do people find this? How does the marketplace work? Do I just say, ‘Oh look, I’ve got this detached garage that I want to make some extra money on,’ and go list it with you guys, and then somebody finds it, almost like a platform like Airbnb, and they just book it? Is that how that works?”

Joseph: “Yeah, it’s almost identical to the experience.”