What: A platform that allows you to rent your house or car to photographers, film producers, and location scouts in search of space suitable to use in their creative project; they also provide booking, advice, and billing
Expected pay: $50+/hour
Commissions & Fees: 15%
Where: Los Angeles, New York (entire Tri-State region), and San Francisco.
Requirements: You must be the owner of the property or have written approval from the owner to rent it out; have good photos; pass a site review; have a phone number, email address (to get and respond to rental requests) and a bank account, where they can direct-deposit your money.
Review:
PROS:
- Generally rents the space for 12-hour stretches to movie-makers
- Your property doesn’t need to be pristine.
- Site co-founder Mathieu Goudot says the site recently rented an empty lot in the desert to producers of a horror film. Listed properties range from elegant beach cottages to tiny ramshackle residences in the inner city. Each has its own market.
- The amount you can and should charge is 3-5 times what you would normally charge to rent your home via Airbnb.
- The site offers a liability policy to cover the property while it is rented and they take a deposit (50% of the rental amount).
- You get paid for the rental on the day the rental occurs and have 72 hours after the completion of the shoot to report any property damage.
- If you have a luxury or classic car — even a junky classic, like a rusty 1965 Corvair — you may also be able to rent that through Giggster too.
- Because this is for the movies, you can specify that no one drives the car or only you can drive the car. The rates are generous.
- You can also require that renters pay for a “site rep” — an independent individual, who remains onsite throughout filming to ensure everyone follows the rules of your contract.
- Giggster has a phone number on its “contact us” page and executives at the company answer it.
CONS:
- There are likely to be more people on your property than there would be if you were renting to a tourist.
- That creates its own set of risks, like a greater chance of people hurting themselves on your property or damaging your things.
SOME NOTES
Giggster advises demanding to see permits and production insurance documents. Giggster’s insurance policy is liability coverage only, protecting you from getting sued if someone gets injured on your property. It does not cover property damage. Property damage coverage would come from the deposit and from the producer’s production insurance policy.
