yours2share

Last night’s edition of Channel 4′s Location, location, location with Kirsty Allsopp and Phil Spencer was interesting as it showed three friends buying a property in London together . What I particularly liked was this was a sensible look at the shared option, with the neither the pros or cons sensationalised, just simply laid out.  It struck me that the three friends had thought about it carefully and it was likely to work well for them.  It would be very interesting to go back to see how... Read Full Story

Looking back at 2011, one the biggest areas of change has been sharing cars (sharing the ownership of cars rather than the equally important lift sharing). Cars represent a huge opportunity for sharing because of the number of very expensive assets which spend the vast proportion of their time unused. Shared ownership of cars used to be relatively difficult to manage. Until recently most shared cars were in private syndicates, predominantly set up to own sports, classic or super cars. Often... Read Full Story

Over the last five years there has been an increase in tenants letting accommodation on a Monday to Friday basis. Usually these are people who work away from home and had become fed up with living in hotels or bed and breakfasts all week. There are some major advantages for Monday to Friday landlords compared with full-time tenants: Use of the room at weekends Lodger tends to bring a lot less stuff – just what they need for the weekend Their house isn’t the lodger’s permanent... Read Full Story

Sharing, or “Collaborative Consumption” as it is often now called, really started to gain traction in 2011. I started yours2share in 2006 and frankly most people thought I was insane. Now I hear about new sharing related websites daily and it seems like all my friends and relations are busy Couchsurfing , AirBnB-ing , freecycling, car clubbing, co-working etc. If you want to know more about Collaborative Consumption, I highly recommend Rachel Botsman and Roo Roger’s book “ What’s Mine Is... Read Full Story

Last night I went to Transition Norwich’ s third birthday celebration to hear Rob Hopkins of the Transition Network speak.  He’s a very good speaker and the messages were clear: Sustainability makes sense, however you look at the future Work towards sustainabiity and resilience improves The route to sustainability is different for each community The best way to work how to make it work is to try things out and find out what works for your community There are many aspects to... Read Full Story

Interesting interview of Lauren Anderson, Innovation Director at Collaborative Consumption ,  a hub dedicated to swapping, sharing, bartering, trading and renting, by Andrew Keen of TechCrunch , a high tech magazine website, as she explains why collaborative consumption could be as significant as the Industrial Revolution . Read Full Story

We’ve a great new boat sharing case study, Andrew A has sold a share in his Fairline Phantom 48 based in Mallorca, to create a new private syndicate using Net Lawman’s contract templates.  Read about it here. Read Full Story

The second of two posts about ways that sharing can help people find suitable accomodation solutions, specificaly looking at: Homeshares – see previous post Housing co-operatives – below Housing co-operatives For those who want to move on from the house/flat/home share scenario, who need more space and somewhere long term to live, and who may have children too, the options are getting ever more constrained. Even if they can pay the mortgage, have they got the deposit? Is their... Read Full Story

Many people are struggling with housing costs, whether they want to rent or buy. Students and recent graduates are having a particularly hard time. If they want to buy in the future they need to save, but rents are so high that this can be impossible. Families with young children are also finding it difficult to afford bigger houses to accommodate their needs. Two completely different strategies offer ways forward. Homeshares – below Housing co-operatives – separate post Homeshare... Read Full Story

After many months hard work, we’ve now launched the new yours2share website.  Please have a look! Many thanks to Ruth Cheesley of Virya Technologies for her help with this Joomla based system. The new yours2share has a forum and directory dedicated to everything related to private syndicates and all things sharing.  Over the next few weeks I will be developing these. The new yours2share website now charges members to post ads. I’ve reluctantly had to accept that it is better for members... Read Full Story