Frazzled motorists in the increasingly congested cities of South Africa can now save themselves the headache of searching for parking thanks to the launch of a brand-new web app.
RentMyBay allows motorists to locate a temporary – or more regular – parking bay within moments. Anyone who has endlessly circled the city looking for parking is sure to appreciate this brilliant and time-saving concept.
“Living in the CBD in a 13-floor building (a combination of offices and apartments) I noticed how the parking was being severely under-utilised with bays that stood empty either during office hours or overnight. With crime being such a rising problem in South Africa, we feel it is awful that people are having to deal with break-ins, vandalism and theft on a regular basis. Rent My Bay helps with safer parking options and encourage people and businesses with parking spaces to list on the app, making their parking work for them,” says Craig Murray founder of RentMyBay
I realised that there was an opportunity here for a shared parking rental concept, “Rent your Bay while you’re Away”. Many people live in the city centre but leave during office hours to work, leaving their parking space empty during peak periods. The same applies to parking bays that stand open after office hours. Along with maximising the availability of parking spaces with this new shared-rental concept, I wanted to create one central platform that can revolutionise parking rentals as a whole. Like an “Air BnB” for parking!
I started drafting the concept in November 2017. Being a software developer, I could envision how to solve the various parking problems by developing an online platform which I started developing in February 2018.
I wanted the site to be peer-to-peer based, connecting drivers to the parking bay owners and to cater for various rental periods; daily, weekly, monthly and annual parking. It was important for me to ensure it was a customisable platform, allowing users to be in full control of how they want to rent out their space, the availability, price and cancellation terms. My focus is on simplicity, convenience and automation, I want it to be as easy as possible and hassle-free to list and find parking.
It took 1 year of development, launching live in March 2019
Rent My Bay is designed for individuals, businesses. Our aim is to fully optimise parking spaces, creating more availability, additional revenue streams, and in turn less congestion. Our site is fully automated and provides a platform for any kind of parking requirement. We have an additional admin tool that we provide to businesses with multiple listings. For example, Body corporates and Estate agents can use this to easily log and track all the information for their parking portfolios.
A great advantage of listing on Rent My Bay is that it attracts a targeted market which is a first in South Africa for parking rentals! It is free to list a parking space, garage or driveway with the added benefit of marketing and advertising from our inhouse sales team.
Our fees are kept to a minimal rate and are only charged upon a successful transaction. We do not restrict users to exclusively listing on our site
– Individuals: 5% fee to the hosts and parkers. – Businesses and Estate agents: 6-8%
Convenience is key, and we have structured the platform to be just that. Once your space is listed, you never have to modify your pricing for long term rentals. We have a feature for you to automate your annual increase percentage of your own choosing. We also provide automated lease renewals. If a lease is not renewed, the parking bay will automatically re-appear on our system to instantly find you a new tenant and keep the revenue coming in.
Street parking is very expensive in the city, amounting to just under R3000 to park during office hours on a monthly basis.
There’s no one central place where you can go that specifically caters for parking rentals. It is a very time-consuming task of manually searching; either physically going into buildings to check notice boards or searching through the online marketplaces that are for a wide spectrum of services and products.
We are scrapping out this outdated process of finding parking, to the modern digital era with our specialised platform, Rent My Bay.
RentMyBay founder Craig Murray says, “You can list any type of parking space from a parking bay, your driveway or even your backyard. You have the option of simply renting out your parking space and specifying its pricing, availability and minimum stay OR you might be like me and live in Cape Town’s CBD but travel to work daily, leaving your valuable parking bay empty, you now have the ability to list your parking bay as available during the hours that it is not in use to earn extra income.”
WEBSITE: www.rentmybay.co.za SOCIAL MEDIA: @rentmybay FB, IG, TW