[bbakerma]

Hi there -- this is Brian from Rent the Backyard. What we are doing here is finding a synergy between homeowners and renters, allowing for people to profit off their unused backyards while increasing the housing stock. Airbnb started the trend of being able to monetize your home in the form of rental income and we see ourselves as an extension of that phenomenon. In our case, homeowners give up zero privacy to make meaningful extra income. We help existing homeowners stay in their homes amidst rising costs in the Bay Area.

[Causality1]

Oh I don't mean to say it doesn't make sense, both in terms of personal finance and with regards to the housing market. Then again, so does letting people sell their own kidneys and livers for transplant.

>Rent the Backyard will give the homeowner an increasing share of equity in the apartment, until they own it completely after 30 years

What's the life expectancy of these backyard studio apartments? Somewhere around, oh, thirty years?

>Homeowners also can buy out the startup’s equity and take full ownership at any time (which they’ll need to do if they sell their home and move out).

I'm assuming there's some legal way to transfer the entire contract to another person, so you could sell your house and property along with your stake in the a-yard-ment and the new owner takes over where you left off. Having a renter will lessen the likelihood of having to sell for financial reasons but a good chunk of home sales are prompted by owner becoming unable to keep up the house or live alone in general, due to age or illness.

How's the agreement work with other stuff like use of the yard itself and other stuff that might be concerning like loud music, changes to the fencing setup, planting of flowers the renter is allergic to, etc? Not just for the homeowner, but for the renter. I can imagine many of the owners, having had to put very little work into this, really not giving a crap about their renter or her/his needs.

>What we are doing here is finding a synergy

C'mon man. Your picture doesn't feature nearly enough 80s power tie for you to talk like that.

[sburl]

We build units that are just as nice as your existing home. With proper upkeep, they'll last just as long too.

This was something the article didn't quite get right. You're able to pass this agreement on to a next of kin or new buyer. We'll even lower the priority of our lien to allow a mortgage to be issued.

You're right that one of our hopes is to enable people to stay in their homes amidst the rising cost of living. The income from this unit can be used to hire a caretaker or even enable the homeowner to downsize in place -- moving into the ADU and renting out the main home. In this scenario, the homeowner would just need to pay us half the market rent.

Finding a balance between renter and homeowner is a big concern of ours. The scale of the difficulty depends a lot of times on how much space there is on the lot. Most of the time we'll build as far from the main home as possible to help preserve privacy and independence but there's still a balance to find. We have an expectation for homeowners and renters alike to be reasonable and we don't want to need to enforce that with a contract but setting clear expectations and methods of recourse are important.

I don't think I've ever seen Brian wear a tie ;)