MAKE POUNDS FROM YOUR PROPERTY
Drum up some extra cash by pimping out your property, selling space and trading your tomatoes
Feature Stephanie durrant
Luck of the draw
Did you know you could win cash based on your postcode? See freepostcodelottery.com and sign up for free. There’s a draw every day with £200 up for grabs, paid for by advertising on the site.
CASH IN THE ATTIC
If put on the spot, could you recall everything hoarded in your loft? Nope, us neither! Yet, according to EssexRooms.com, among the spiders and Christmas decs, the average UK home has an estimated £1,992 worth of goods stashed away just gathering dust. If you think of that in terms of a new bathroom or kitchen, that’s serious cash. So next weekend, take some time to search under the eaves, blitz the basement and raid the garage to see what treasures might be lurking. Then, once you’ve cleared some clutter, log on to storemates.co.uk and earn some extra pennies by renting out your storage space. It’s the perfect solution for people looking for local, affordable self storage, and you could bag yourself upwards of £10 per week for no real extra effort.
When it comes to storage, HomeSense has it covered
POWER UP
In February of this year, a new scheme opened in the UK with different tariff rates and rules for receiving payments for generating your own electricity for new applicants. The Export Tariff allows you to sell extra units back to your energy supplier for 4.77p per unit of electricity. Check gov.uk for the full regulations. Steve Munday,
Md of Clean Energy Installations gives this advice, ‘Solar PV remains the most affordable “renewable” investment, despite recent cuts to the Feed-in-Tariff scheme. The FIT is a bonus, however much it is when you choose to invest: it ultimately gives you a token tax-free income for 20 years. But the big benefit is the saving on your electricity bills. It is a sound investment to install solar PV as the savings alone can amount to more than 10% of the investment cost. Also, consider combining with an