Brendan is 42, a plumber in Drimnagh, has two kids in primary school, and pays €1,470 a month on a 25-year mortgage he took out in 2019. Last weekend, sitting at his kitchen table, he showed me the spreadsheet he keeps in a notebook.
Three Packhood listings. €145, €130, €165 a month. Total gross: €5,280 a year. After the platform fee and tax, ~€3,200 net. That's €267 a month — close enough to €1,470 ÷ 5 that he calls it "the fifth mortgage payment of the year, paid by stuff I'm not using." He listed all three over a Saturday-Sunday in June 2024.
He's not a special case. He's just a guy who realised before everyone else in his estate that the house his parents bought in 1986 had three storage-able rooms in it earning him zero. Here's exactly what he did, the order he did it in, and what it would look like if you copied him.
Listing 1: his own garage (€145/mo)
Started with what was easiest. Single-car garage at his own house, attached to the side. Used to hold a workbench he hadn't touched in three years, a chest freezer, and three boxes of his late father's tools he was "going to sort one day." Cleared the floor on the Saturday morning, took five photos, listed at lunchtime.
First booking: 13 days. A young dentist couple between rentals. They've been in for 19 months and counting; their booking has rolled twice. Combined Brendan's earned €2,755 from this one listing.
His comment when I asked what surprised him: "The dental couple — I never once spoke to them after the first day. They paid every month. They left around month 14, came back at month 16, kept paying. I half-forgot they were renting from me."
Listing 2: his parents' empty garage in Cabra (€130/mo)
Brendan's parents moved into a sheltered apartment in Glasnevin in 2022. Their original 1960s semi-d in Cabra has been empty since — the family hadn't decided whether to sell, rent, or hold. The garage at the back was full of his father's tools and his mother's preserved-jam jars from 1994.
Saturday afternoon, with the listing-1 done, he drove over to Cabra, cleared the garage in two hours (binned 80% of the contents — "if I haven't used my dad's pipe wrenches in three years I'm not going to"), photographed it, listed it.
First booking: 17 days. A returning emigrant from Boston shipping back furniture from a 4-year stint. Stayed 11 months, then moved out into a permanent rental and took the furniture with him. Replaced 5 weeks later by a small e-commerce reseller doing Vinted volumes. Combined: €2,210 across 17 months.
The lever: Brendan's parents weren't paying for the garage to earn money — but they were paying property tax, insurance, and council fees on the empty house. The €130/mo from this listing now covers all those costs and contributes to the parents' lunches. The empty house went from cost centre to cash-flow neutral in one weekend.
Listing 3: the shed he bought specifically to list (€165/mo)
Sunday, after he saw listing 1 already had two inquiry messages, Brendan drove to Woodie's. Bought a 2.5m × 3m metal shed for €890 with anti-corrosion treatment + alarmed-door + lockable padbar bracket. Spent 90 minutes assembling it on a corner of his back garden the same afternoon. Listed it as "Outdoor-covered storage, alarmed, ground-level, 24/7 access" — the highest-rate-per-cubic-metre listing in his postcode.
First booking: 26 days. A wedding photographer storing equipment between weddings. Has been in 14 months at the same rate. Earned to date: €2,310.
Payback math: Shed cost €890. After 6 months of rent, the shed had paid itself off. Months 7+ are pure cashflow on a depreciating asset he doesn't use. The shed will earn ~€1,980/yr for the next 12+ years with effectively zero maintenance.
Brendan's portfolio summary (24 months in)
Listing 1 (his garage): €2,755 earned across 24 months. Renter-1 still in.
Listing 2 (parents' garage): €2,210 earned across 24 months. Two renters back-to-back.
Listing 3 (purpose-built shed): €2,310 earned across 24 months. One renter, going strong.
Total gross 24 months: €7,275. Net after platform fee + 40% marginal tax: ~€4,365. Effective monthly average: €182 — bigger than what most Irish workers can produce after tax in a four-hour Saturday shift.
Total time spent across 24 months: approximately 14 hours (initial weekend listing setup, three move-ins, six chat messages, one renewal). That's an effective hourly rate of around €311/hr, but the more honest framing is: this isn't an hourly rate at all — it's space converting to cash without his presence.
Why most plumbers in Drimnagh haven't done this
When Brendan tells people about it at the pub, the response is some version of: "Yeah, I've heard of that, I'd do it, just busy with stuff." A year later, same conversation, same answer.
Brendan's actual differentiator wasn't expertise, capital, or special access. It was that he opened the listing form on a Saturday morning and didn't let himself walk away until the photos were uploaded. Everyone else has the listing in their head as "something to look into." It never gets done.
Six other plumbers Brendan knows have garages they could list. None of them have. He'll have collected approximately €15,000–€18,000 by the time any of them get round to it.
Run the math on your own house
Walk through your home (and any second property your family has access to). Count every storable space — garages, sheds, attics with hatches, basements, large unused rooms, dedicated outhouses. For each one estimate €70–€150/mo at city median. Add them up.
If your number is over €3,000/yr of theoretical gross: the question isn't whether to list, it's how soon. Brendan's three-listing portfolio was assembled in one weekend. Yours can be too.
Open the listing form right now. Don't put this tab in the background. Don't tell yourself "this weekend." The Brendans of Drimnagh are the ones who clicked through within ten minutes of reading something like this.