Walk down any street in Drumcondra, Ranelagh, or Stoneybatter and look at the garages. Eight out of ten of them aren't holding cars. They're holding a dead exercise bike, a tired lawnmower, paint cans from 2019, and the box from a dishwasher you bought in 2021. They're storage rooms — except nobody is paying you to store anything in them.
Meanwhile a couple in Cabra is paying €240 a month to a commercial self-storage facility on the M50 to keep a half-disassembled cot, a guitar amp, and four boxes of inherited books. Both sides are losing. You're paying property tax on space that earns nothing; they're paying a corporate landlord with no relationship to them.
Packhood exists to close that gap. Here's what the numbers actually look like for an Irish host in 2026 — what you can earn, what it takes, and why the easiest passive income most homeowners never claim is sitting under their feet.
How much an Irish garage actually earns
A single-car garage in Dublin (typically 14m² – 18m²) lists for €100–€180 per month on Packhood. The exact number depends on three things: how dry it is, whether it has electricity, and how easy it is to access at night. A clean, dry, single-locked garage in D6, D14, or D24 is the sweet spot — those are the postcodes with the highest demand because they're commutable from the city centre but the renters there have no garages of their own.
Outside Dublin the rates are tighter. Cork sits at €80–€140/mo, Galway €70–€120/mo, Limerick €60–€110/mo. Smaller cities like Sligo or Athlone come in at €50–€90/mo, but they also have less commercial-storage competition, which means a Packhood listing often books out within two weeks.
Multiply those numbers by twelve and add the (small) Packhood platform fee. Even at the bottom of the range — €60/mo in a midlands town — that's €720 a year. At the top — €180/mo in Dublin — you're looking at €2,160. With zero physical labour beyond unlocking the door once at move-in.
Why this is the easiest income most homeowners never claim
Compare storage hosting to the obvious alternatives. Renting out a spare room (rent-a-room scheme): €14,000/year tax-free in Ireland, but you're sharing your kitchen, bathroom, and Wi-Fi with another adult. Airbnb short-term let: Higher headline rate but Dublin City Council's STR rules require planning permission for non-PPR properties, and you're cleaning between every guest. Driveway rental (parking apps): Real but seasonal — useful only near a stadium or hospital.
Storage is the only one where the renter and the host don't need to share a building, a key schedule, a bathroom, or a single conversation past move-in. You hand over a key (or a code), they bring boxes, they leave. You pop in once a month if at all. Most Packhood hosts message their renter twice in three months: once to confirm move-in, once to wish them a happy Christmas.
That's the bit nobody talks about. Housesharing is a relationship; Airbnb is hospitality work; driveway rental is a queue. Storage hosting is a transaction with a four-month tail and almost no human friction.
What the Irish Revenue actually thinks about storage income
This is where most people get scared off. They shouldn't be. Storage income is treated as standard Case IV miscellaneous income on your Form 11 (or a Form 12 if you're PAYE-only). It's taxable as part of your normal income — not under the rent-a-room scheme, because that scheme is specifically for accommodation, not storage.
In practice, on €1,800 of storage income at the standard 40% marginal rate (most Irish hosts), you'll owe roughly €720 in income tax + USC + PRSI combined. Net: ~€1,080 a year. Far better than zero, and far better than the €0 the garage earned last year.
If your total non-PAYE income (storage + dividends + freelance + everything else) is under €5,000, you can self-assess via Form 12 — no Form 11 required. Most Packhood hosts fall under this threshold, so the admin is one short return per year. Packhood emails you a YTD earnings summary every January to make this trivially easy.
What renters actually want (and how to beat 80% of listings)
Read the data from existing IE listings. The spaces that book within two weeks have all four of the following: (1) at least 5 photos, including one wide shot showing the full empty space; (2) a one-line description that names the suburb and the dimensions ("Dry single-car garage in Rathmines, 4.5m × 5.5m, locks from inside"); (3) explicit access hours — even if it's just "Mon–Sun 7am–10pm"; (4) at least one feature beyond the basics — alarmed, lit, ground floor, secure boundary.
Listings that take longer to book are missing one of those four. Usually the photos. Always the photos. A garage shot from outside through a half-open door looks like every other one on the platform; a wide shot from inside, lit, with the floor visible, signals "this is liveable for storage" — and that's what the renter is buying.
Pricing matters less than people think within the right band. €145 vs €155 in the same neighbourhood barely affects booking time. €145 vs €95 absolutely does — the cheap one looks suspicious, not bargain. Anchor at the city's median; you can always tighten later.
The two-listing portfolio play
Roughly one in seven Packhood IE hosts has more than one listing. The pattern is almost always the same: someone lists a garage, the booking lands easily, they remember they have a spare room they never use, they list that too. A garage + spare room in Dublin together earns €240–€320/mo — the cost of a small car.
If you have a second property — a parents' house with an empty attic, an investment property between tenants, a holiday home in West Cork that sits empty 9 months a year — every one of those is a candidate. The economics are even better than the primary property because you weren't using the space at all. Marginal cost: roughly zero. Marginal income: full price.
Hosts in this segment quietly build to €4,000–€7,000 a year of storage income across 3–4 listings without ever installing a single shelf. List the first one — most hosts add the second one within 90 days.
Get started
Open the listing form, take five photos with your phone, write three sentences, set a price within the city band, and verify your identity through Stripe Connect. The whole process takes under fifteen minutes for the form and roughly two minutes for the verification.
Within 48 hours your listing is searchable. Most Dublin hosts get their first booking within two weeks; outside Dublin it's three to four. By month three the cheque is automatic — Packhood transfers to your bank account every month, on the same day, for as long as the renter stays.
Your garage was earning zero this morning. Tomorrow it could be earning €145 a month for the next two years. The only reason it isn't already is that nobody told you the math.