MAKE MONEY FROM YOUR HOME Pay off your mortgage faster with these money-making ideas

BECOME A HOST

With rentals in most cities netting about £50 a night, the idea of listing your spare room on a platform like Airbnb or housetrip.com (part of Tripadvisor) is appealing. It’s free to list, although both take 3% of what you charge. If the house is your main property, the first £7,500 you earn by renting out a room is tax free (or £3,750 if you’re letting with another person) as part of the government’s Rent a Room scheme. After that, you’ll be taxed at your normal rate. You’ll need to let your mortgage provider and insurer know (standard house insurance typically won’t cover it). If you’re put off by the admin involved, there are now sites that do the hard work for you. Hostmaker, for example, charges from 12% of rental income per booking to clean and manage your property on your behalf.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION If you’re happy to have people take over your pad, you could earn £400-plus a day for renting out your home for a photo shoot or £1,000-plus for filming. Kell Gatherer, a director at

Location Works, an agency with thousands of properties that can be hired for shoots on its books, says, ‘There is a lot of demand for locations that look ordinary. For an advert for a cleaning product, they might be looking for a pretty ordinary home.’ Register for free with a location agency such as goodspaces.co.uk, 1st-option.com or lightlocations.com. They’ll take a percentage of your fee as commission and organise any contracts and public liability insurance.

RENT OUT YOUR DRIVE Parking space is in high demand, especially if you live in a city centre or close to an airport. Register with parkonmydrive.com or justpark.com and you could earn £50 a week on average. It’s free to list on Justpark, with a service fee of 3% of the amount you receive. Parkonmydrive charges a £20 annual fee.

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