This suggestion is made every time there's a thread about WeWork and it's just not viable. There are startups in this space already and the reality is always borne out: it's simply not worthwhile to rent out space in your home to an individual. You can get a monthly membership to WeWork for <$400 in most locations, and there's lots of no-brand co-working spaces that charge less than half of that. If you can pay $200/month to have 24/7 access to a space with amenities and flexibility... why would you pay someone $10 to sit in their apartment for 7 hours until they come home and you awkwardly shuffle out so they can make their dinner? And who is going to rent their apartment out for $10/day with all the liability that comes along with it? All the pain of Airbnb, <10% of the earnings.
Every one of the startups in this space either disappears, or pivots their focus to larger spaces designed for meetings, events or shoots. For example there's https://breather.com in the US and https://www.vrumi.com in the UK. The cheapest space on vrumi is far more expensive than WeWork.
I think one of the components that drives the success of AirBNB, the ability to "live" for a couple weeks in, say, a former hermitage just outside Naples or a beachfront condo in the Seychelles, would also be viable for small teams or full time remote workers. Essentially it's just AirBnB but with some additional minimum guaranteed service levels for infrastructure (security, internet, privacy, pricing structured around a minimum 10 day work week block for fixed contract lengths, similar to short term commercial lease terms) for remote workers.
Another consideration is that private homes-as-workspaces can offer some incidental cost savings in the form of things you get with residential zoning like (usually) free parking and a car-based commute that does not follow urban congestion patterns. Say you need to work within 40 minutes of Paris or downtown LA in order to make the odd off-hours mixer or client meeting, but your daily workflow can be conducted entirely within a single dedicated space out in the burbs, priced comparably to the shared desks at a WW location and more comfortable or in a more walkable area than a typical industrial park.
To be fair the number of people who are able and willing to pay even $200/mo for co-working space is MUCH smaller than the number of people who are able and willing to pay $10/mo. Plenty of people would prefer to pay $10 to sit in someone's apartment for 7 hours, just like every day millions of people pay $5 to sit in a cafe for a couple hours.
This becomes more obvious when you leave the rich tech bubble of SF.
I’m not clear on the numbers you’re thinking about: is that $10 per month or $10 per day? The former is impossible (that’s... 1/300th of what Airbnb-ing would earn) and the latter is equivalent to the cost of a formal co-working space.
As the existing startups have proven, there’s no market for individuals renting houses to work from, the economics don’t work. A day pass at WeWork is cheaper than every listing on Vrumi.
I looked at Vrumi and the cost is ridiculous!
$20/day/person tops, I go to Hacker Dojo in the Bay area and it's a decent place with good wifi, nothing fancy and its about that much.
Every one of the startups in this space either disappears, or pivots their focus to larger spaces designed for meetings, events or shoots. For example there's https://breather.com in the US and https://www.vrumi.com in the UK. The cheapest space on vrumi is far more expensive than WeWork.