Here’s an option for generating extra cash from your home: Turn it into a venue.
That is, your house might be a great spot to offer as a rental for parties, weddings, corporate dinners, even photo shoots. The key is to match up the house to the celebrants.
Tony Adam, thinks he’s found a way to be the matchmaker: Earlier this year, he founded Eventup.com, which aims to be a marketplace to connect people looking to rent a perfect venue with people who have that venue. Some of them are true mansions — the stuff of fabulous magazine layouts and backdrops for TV series and movies. Others are more along the lines of just “nice places,” he said.
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The Los Angeles-based online marketing veteran explained how he came to devise the site, which has listings and photography for about 3,000 homes and commercial spaces in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Miami:
Q: How did you come to create Eventup.com?
A: I’ve thrown a lot of private dinners and conferences for the Internet marketing industry, and each time, it was difficult to find a location. In the range of 10 to 20 persons for an event, it’s fairly easy. When you go above that, it’s more difficult to find a space. It would take me two, three, four days to plan an event two weeks out. I’d spend days and nights calling back and forth. So I thought there needed to be a way to find locations. The site went live a few months ago.
Q: Who’s using it, so far?
A: In addition to homes, we also have (listings of) commercial locations, like restaurants, that can be rented out. At this point, the bulk of our bookings have been to corporate individuals.
But weddings are growing — people want weddings in places that are unique. Not many brides want to get married at a “wedding factory” — they want someplace that’s memorable. I know that people want to have unique experiences, whether it’s a birthday or anniversary or other gathering.
Q: How does it work?
A: You can browse by location and price, and book a venue or, more likely, schedule a walkthrough. It’s free to those who book a venue for their event; we charge the venue owner 15 percent of the rental price. The rentals so far have ranged from $250 to $10,000 (though there are some listings that are asking even higher rents).
The site is set up so that the person looking for a venue can submit sort of a “request for proposals” from a place they’re interested in. You specify, I have this type of budget, I’m going to have a caterer or a DJ, or I might need valet service. The property owner and renter work out their own agreements.
Q: I should think there are a lot of ins and outs to be considered by a homeowner, such as insurance, security, etc. Which concerns does the homeowner have to factor in to this kind of agreement?
A: Yes, insurance is important. The venue owners can get insurance through us. We have just completed an agreement with Lloyd’s of London to provide $1 million of insurance, free to the property owner for an event. The biggest question we’ve heard from homeowners and venue owners is, what happens if something gets damaged? We haven’t had any problems to date, but we want to make sure people don’t have to worry.
(Property owners) also may have to consider security deposits, clean-up requirements (a lot of homeowners will charge a cleaning fee of $200, with larger homes requiring $500), parking considerations, cancellation policies, zoning restrictions, homeowner’s association rules, noise ordinances, etc.
Q: What kind of house makes a good candidate for this kind of event rental?
A: Although there are mansions listed, we’ve booked smaller locations — it doesn’t have to be a large house. Some of the listings are homes with a celebrity connection — for example, there’s the house that was featured in “The Bachelor” television series. Eric Clapton’s former home in Venice, Calif., is listed. The San Francisco home that was the location of “Mrs. Doubtfire” is available.
At the end of the day, the listings are unique. In Chicago, for instance, there’s a penthouse with spectacular views of downtown. Celebrity connections are nice to have, but really, it’s about the location.
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Twitter:@maryumberger