Home of the Future

The New Economy

• Until recently if there was a stranger sleeping in your bed, another driving your car and someone else loitering outside your front door you would have called the police. Now, it probably means that you’ve joined the “sharing economy” — you rent out your home on Airbnb, make some extra money through EasyCar Club and have paid someone to wait for a delivery using TaskRabbit.
  
  These companies are all part of a new industry based on using technology to share assets, resources and skills, and it is challenging traditional business models across the board. So who are the big players, what are the investment implications — and how can you get involved?
  
  This new model, also called the “on-demand economy”, is one of the most significant legacies of the technology revolution spawned by the internet, and the pace of its growth is staggering. PwC, the accountancy firm, estimates that revenues for the five most prominent sharing economy sectors — peer-to-peer (P2P) finance, staffing, P2P accommodation, car sharing and music and video streaming — could rise to £9 billion in the UK by 2025, up from £0.5 billion today. Global revenues, which have now reached $15 billion (£9.6 billion), could hit $335 billion in ten years.
  
  Staffing
  
  What to do if the agenda for your day includes walking the dogs, waiting at home for a new washing machine to be delivered and queueing up for the latest iPhone? The sharing economy is here to help, and you can book people to do all of these things on Taskrabbit, an odd-jobs marketplace where people looking for extra income list themselves and will do almost anything, as long it’s legal.