Meet Neighbor, the startup that just raised $2.5 million to connect people with excess room in their homes to people seeking storage space

If you're relocating to a smaller or shared room to save on rent, chances are you're looking for a place to keep your extra things. That could mean spending up to $100 a month on a storage unit on the outskirts of town — a little more if you're only looking to store your things for a month or two, since most facilities try to lock renters into contracts. 

Neighbor, a year-old company that just announced $2.5 million in its first round of VC funding, is trying to fix the self-storage industry with a peer-to-peer alternative that the CEO says is a better alternative to storage for renters, and a better use of unoccupied space than Airbnb.

Here's how it works:

The Salt Lake City-based company calls itself the Airbnb of storage.

Neighbor connects people who have unused spaces with people in the area looking for a place to keep their things.

Hosts share details and images of their unoccupied areas on the website, and people can choose one depending on the size and location that's right for them — in a neighbor’s house, for example.

For renters, a peer-to-peer storage platform solves a lot of problems.

In addition to accessibility, Neighbor offers renters the flexibility of time and size as well as security.

There are no restrictions on the minimum or maximum amount of time that a renter and host must agree to and the spaces range from small closets that store three boxes to a large lot that stores three buses.

Storing your things in a home also removes the risk of theft that renters assume when they use storage spaces. Neighbor uses Facebook's All Mutual Friends API — the same one used by Tinder — so that renters have the option to search for hosts who they have mutual friends with.  

For hosts, co-founder and CEO Joseph Woodbury says Neighbor is a better choice than Airbnb, because of the minimal maintenance it requires and the variety of spaces that can be rented out.

“A lot of people have talked about Airbnb as 'passive income,' but there's still a little bit of work involved there,” he said. “You gotta move out of your space, they come for two days, then you clean up after them, then you go get another customer.”

With Neighbor, you can sit back and get a monthly deposit in your bank account once items are situated, “essentially for doing nothing,” said Woodbury. 

See the rest of the story at INSIDER