Brooke Renteria moved from California to a studio in Fort Greene, Brooklyn two years ago. All she had to unpack were her suitcases. Located in Caesura, a Brooklyn Academy of Music catering corner residence, the less than 4,500-square-foot unit featured a Murphy bed, a built-in table/desk, and a 49-inch Smart TV.
Ms. Renteria, who is 24 and works in engineering, also had access to the building’s common room, a basement closet full of household items that residents could borrow free of charge. Among the dozens of items: a sewing machine, a professional ninja blender and a white china dinner service for 12 people.
“I think I used a chair or two there,” when friends came over, she said recently as she walked through Caesura’s lobby, where candy jars were filled with pet treats and a monitor showing details of yoga classes.
Caesarea is not cheap. When the 12-story, 123-unit building opened in 2018, the 34 furnished micro studios started at $2,588 per month for 314 square feet. Ms. Renteria pays $2,900 for hers. But unlike the swimming pools and swanky gyms in many of Brooklyn’s emerging high-rises, Caesura’s common goods cater to economy rather than luxury, a way to declutter cramped spaces and encourage renters to partake in the philosophically and ecologically benevolent culture of sharing .
Commons are designed to “support affordability, reduce consumption and enhance residents’ sense of being part of a larger community,” said Joshua Haggarty, associate developer for asset management at Jonathan Rose Companies, the developer of Caesura. The program was designed in the same spirit of conviviality as the building’s fitness center, rooftop garden and bicycle storage facility, he said.
It remains unique among the Rose Companies’ 80 properties in 11 states. Mr Haggarty said that while older buildings owned or acquired by the developer do not have sufficient space for the program, Common Goods will be part of two soon-to-be-completed rental buildings: Sendero Verde in East Harlem and NC5 in Philly. (Currently, no website advertises this convenience.)
In his 2021 book, The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism, Kyle Chayka reported that “the average American household owns over 300,000 items.” Since the early days of the modern sharing economy, entrepreneurs have struggled with marketplaces for the short-term use of purchases that households tend to waste: things like drills, punch bowls, tents and tripods.
The creation and demise of numerous startups has shown that convenience and trust are key to sharing. Apartment buildings are logical centers for exchange, since residents do not have to travel long distances to borrow an object and interact with building management or neighbors.
Landlords are increasingly viewing property sharing as a benefit in attracting and retaining tenants. And they’re experimenting with different distribution methods.
Like Caesura, the new Citizen W10 apartment building in downtown Denver buys and maintains merchandise for tenants to borrow. But the offer is sporty – bicycles, tents, scooters, longboards. Renters can borrow up to two items for free: bikes and trolleys for up to 24 hours and everything else for up to five days.
Angela Harris of Trio Design in Denver, who worked on the building’s interior design, said the equipment room was designed with a “double bonus approach”: Not only are residents saved from investing in sports gear, but they can “go out and have it.” enjoy together”. ”
For the benefit of their client, the space is visible from the lobby so potential residents can look inside and be impressed.
Other buildings use technology-driven platforms that offer a wide range of household and entertainment goods and automate the process of lending.
Founded in 2017 in Irvine, California, Brevvie specializes in vending machine-like product distribution units. They are stocked with household and leisure items and placed in apartment buildings, dormitories and retail stores. The company, whose name is an abbreviation of “rent everything for a short time”, selects properties based on their durability, attractiveness and location. (Surfboards in California; backpacks in Washington state.)
Users browse the items on a website, make a selection, pay an hourly or daily rate, and activate a mechanism to open the locker door and retrieve the item. The system will remind the user when it’s time to return the item and will notify Brevvie and the landlord if anything is lost. Users will be charged for any damage or loss, just like renting a car.
Kristine Everly, co-founder of Brevvie, has a background in real estate marketing. Faced with the fact that the footprint of new homes “is getting smaller and smaller,” she decided to combine the environmental benefit of lower consumption with the practical benefits of having fewer items to store.
“A ladder, a trolley, a vacuum cleaner, a carpet steamer: nobody wants to spend money on that,” she said. “You want to buy a new iPhone.”
Ms Everly, 43, said she fights any stigma attached to shared goods by stocking lockers with high-quality goods that residents of the apartments may be reluctant to buy but enjoy using. Their vacuums are Dyson vacuums which sell for $500 but rent averages about $8 a day. (They can also be rented by the hour.) Their Yeti coolers start at $200 to buy, but can be rented for $12 to $14 per day.
Still, there are haters, particularly among people their parents’ age, Ms Everly said. To those who say it’s gross to rent something someone else has worn or held, she replies: “Well, you just ate at a restaurant and used a fork that someone else had in their mouth.’”
Brevvie sells the in-stock units to landlords for $13,000-$16,000 each and provides 24-hour customer service and supervision for a monthly fee of $199 per locker, paid from the building’s rental income. (The rest stays with the landlords.) To date, 32 lockers have been installed, including 16 on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington. That number will rise to 38 in July.
After stuttering during the pandemic when nobody wanted to share anything touched by human hands, the company is breaking even, Ms Everly said. A side business that sells firewood and propane through the lockers helps keep the business afloat.
Tulu, a four-year-old company with offices in New York City, London, Amsterdam and Tel Aviv, uses a similar model of vending machine to rent goods to people in apartment buildings, hotels and office buildings. The company, which operates in 23 cities around the world, uses its technology platform to collect information about consumer habits that helps it tailor products to locations and strengthen relationships with users (e.g. by giving someone who rents a vacuum cleaner, sends a reminder via SMS). cleaning time again most Thursdays).
The collected data is also sold to product manufacturers. “Companies can understand how people use stuff — what time of day, what day of the week,” said Yishai Lehavi, 37, who co-founded Tulu with Yael Shemer, 30, after the two joined a business accelerator program in Massachusetts had met Technological Institute. “They constantly receive feedback from thousands of unbiased customers.”
Depending on the venue, the Tulu entity might rent out board games, bread makers, or printers that spit out documents from users’ computer files. (A Dyson vacuum is $4 an hour.) Hotels may have scooters, massage guns, and picnic blankets. The company also sells groceries and personal goods like hand soap and toilet paper.
Rental income is split between Tulu and the landlord, who is responsible for maintaining the machines. Mr Lehavi said the company, which he described as a venture-backed start-up, is not yet profitable.
“To me, that’s incredible value,” said Brad Kirshenbaum, who made Tulu a standard when he was senior director of innovation at CA Ventures, a Chicago-based company developing student housing near universities. The upfront cost for a base unit was $4,000 to $5,000, and his company received half the rental income after the first $1,000.
“I haven’t had a single month where I’ve used them extensively and didn’t get my money back, and let’s face it,” he said.
Mr. Kirshenbaum sees the platform as a beacon for a future with a reduced carbon footprint and access to quality resources to enjoy city life.
“Own less,” he said, echoing Tulu’s catchphrase. “Live more.”
Living Small is a bi-weekly column exploring what it takes to live a simpler, more sustainable, or more compact life.
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