WORTHINGTON, Ohio — Your swimming pool could earn you cash. Or, if you want to cool off with your own private pool experience, there’s a way to rent by the hour.
Think of it as a short-term rental app for backyard pools.
“When I told my dad I'm doing this he was like, ‘what, like, what, who does that? Who rents their pool out?’”
Neil Desai was back in Ohio visiting his parents with his two daughters for the Fourth of July when he used the app, Swimply, to book a private pool for an hour.
“In the neighborhood that my parents live in, there were about seven pools within a half a mile,” he said.
Instead of staying at a hotel with a pool, this was cheaper and more convenient.
“The kids can do cannon balls and we don’t have to worry about other guests,” he said.
Others aren’t making a splash, they’re making a profit.
Hosts like Marco Aledia say the extra cash is helpful.
“It's pretty expensive to you know, heat a pool, run a pool, your chemicals, clean it, it feels like a full-time job sometimes keeping track of it,” said Aledia. “So to have a way of offsetting those costs is great.”
He rents out his home pool in Worthington.
“The nervous part of me was this is going to turn into like a college party every weekend at my house, which I didn't want,” he explained.
But it turns out, that most of the people who rent his pool are families looking for a quick, private escape from the heat. He has been renting his pool since the pandemic began. He said he was one of the first in the area, and now more pools are popping up across central Ohio.
And new this summer there are even rec spaces for rent too, like a private pickleball court in Powell.
An option to stay cool or earn some cash.