The single highest-margin Packhood listing is the one in a property the host doesn't actually live in. A parents' empty house, an investment property between tenants, a holiday home in West Cork that gets used 8 weekends a year, an inherited house going through probate — these spaces earn zero today and they're sitting on top of someone else's bills (council rates, insurance, occasional cleaning visits) without contributing back.
Listed as storage on Packhood, the same space earns €70–€140/mo with no opportunity cost. The host doesn't lose access to anything they were using; they monetise space that was earning them nothing. This is the trick that turns hosts with one listing into hosts with three.
The unfair-economics argument
Listing space inside your own home has a real opportunity cost. The garage you're listing was where you parked the car. The spare room was where guests stayed. You're trading some convenience for income.
Listing space inside a property you don't live in has roughly zero opportunity cost. The garage at the parents' empty house was holding cobwebs. The spare room at the inherited house was empty. The basement at the between-tenant investment property was unused for weeks anyway. The host earns the listing rate for using space that was already going to be used by no-one.
Annualised: the same €100/mo Cork garage generates €1,200/yr of gross income whether it's at the host's primary residence or at a parents' empty house in Ballincollig. The net to the host is identical. The lifestyle cost is dramatically different.
The four common second-property patterns
(1) Parents' empty home. Most common pattern. Older parents who've moved into a smaller flat, into managed care, or to live with another family member. The original house often sits empty while the family figures out long-term plans (sell? rent out? hold?). Storage hosting bridges the gap with income that contributes to the parents' costs without committing to a tenancy.
(2) Investment property between tenants. Irish landlords typically have 4–8 weeks of vacancy between tenancies, sometimes longer if they're refurbishing. A garage or attic at the property earns nothing during those gaps and could earn €100–€140/mo of supplementary income on top of the eventual residential rent.
(3) Holiday home / second home. The cottage in West Cork that gets used 6–8 weekends a year. The Donegal house used 3 weeks in summer. Storage takes nothing away from the host's own use of these properties — most renters don't visit the space during the host's holidays anyway, and the rare overlaps can be coordinated by chat.
(4) Inherited property going through probate. The house your grandmother left you that's tied up in legal process for 18 months. You can't sell it yet; you're paying the council rates and insurance regardless. A storage listing in the garage covers some of those costs while the legal process completes.
How to handle the access logistics
The biggest perceived friction with second-property hosting is access. You're not on-site to hand keys over. The renter is going to need a way in and a way to lock up. Three patterns work well:
Smart lock or coded keypad on the garage door (~€80–€150 from any DIY shop, Yale or August are common in IE). Renter gets a code that works during their booking; you can change it in seconds when the booking ends.
Drop-box for a physical key at the property. €30 lockable mounted box. Renter retrieves the key during their booking, you collect it when they finish.
Local key-handler. A neighbour, sibling, or cleaner who already visits the property occasionally and can hand the key over for a €20 thank-you. Useful for once-a-year tenant-change moments at investment properties.
Smart locks are the most common solution in 2026; renters expect them and most hosts don't visit a second property often enough to justify physical key handovers.
What the renter actually wants from a second-property listing
Second-property listings often suit a slightly different renter than the host's primary-residence listings. Returning emigrants storing for 6-12 months while they find permanent housing are particularly drawn to second-property listings — they're moving themselves, they don't need anyone on-site, they want predictable code-based access. Local trades and small businesses like the daytime predictability — same.
Conversely: short-term emergency storage renters (e.g. someone who needs 2 weeks while moving house) prefer a host who can be reached for last-minute access, which a second-property setup has more friction around. Lean into the long-booking renter type for second-property listings.
Tax + insurance considerations
Income from a second-property storage listing is still Case IV miscellaneous income on your return — same treatment as the primary-property listing. The difference is purely commercial: the property has its own insurance, its own council rates, its own utility bills. Your storage listing contributes back without being a structural tenancy that triggers landlord-level reporting.
The one thing to watch: don't list a property as "storage" while you're separately renting it residentially. Mixed-use creates contractual conflicts with the residential tenant. Either rent residentially OR list as storage; not both at the same time on the same property.
Get a second listing live
If you have a second property — even a small section of one — add it as a separate listing. The marginal effort is small (you've done one listing already, the form takes 15 minutes). The marginal income is nearly all profit because there's no opportunity cost.
Most multi-listing hosts on Packhood IE got their second listing live within 90 days of their first booking. The realisation pattern is consistent: list one, book it, see it work, and then notice all the other spaces in your life that could be doing the same thing.