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A parking space in the right part of London can earn steady money for doing very little. Here is how letting one out actually works, what moves the price, and the admin worth doing before your first booking.
The mechanics are simple. You list the space with photos, a description and its exact location, set your availability and a price, and wait for a driver to book. Marketplaces like ParkWelly handle the listing, payments and messaging for private spaces let by the month, the day or the hour.
Once a booking comes in, you confirm it, sort out access and get paid, usually monthly for longer lets. Monthly bookings suit commuters and residents without a space of their own; daily and hourly bookings suit match days, hospital visits and anyone avoiding station car park prices.
Your side of the bargain is short: keep the space available for the times you have sold, and make getting into it painless. The usual dispute in this line of business is a car that could not get in, or a space that was not empty when it should have been.
Location does most of the work. A space a short walk from a Tube or rail station, a hospital or a stadium will usually let faster than one on a quiet road with free parking outside. So will a space inside a controlled parking zone, since visitors cannot simply leave the car on the street during controlled hours.
Sitting just outside the congestion charge zone helps too, because plenty of drivers park on the fringe of central London and travel in. The ULEZ, by contrast, now covers all the London boroughs, so parking further out does not avoid it; compliant cars pay nothing anywhere.
After location comes security. A locked garage or a gated, well-lit driveway commands more than an open frontage, partly on theft grounds and partly because covered, secure spaces appeal to owners of anything low, shiny or convertible.
An EV charge point is increasingly a rent-raiser, especially for drivers in flats who cannot charge at home. You will need a sensible way to price the electricity, either bundled into the rate or billed on usage, and it should be a proper outdoor-rated unit rather than an extension lead through the letterbox.
Access rounds it out. Round-the-clock access is worth more than office hours only, a space a van fits in is worth more than one that barely takes a Fiesta, and anything involving a height barrier should say so in the listing before somebody discovers it the hard way.
Treat any number you read as an estimate, because prices in London vary street by street. The honest method is to search your own postcode on ParkWelly or a similar marketplace, see what nearby spaces actually charge, and price slightly under them to win your first booking and a review.
As a purely illustrative example with round numbers: a driveway letting at £150 a month, occupied ten months of the year, brings in £1,500. The same space near a busy station letting at £250 for twelve months brings in £3,000. Neither figure is a promise; both are arithmetic.
Vacancy is the quiet cost. A reliable monthly tenant at a modest rate often beats a higher headline price that sits empty, which is why long lets tend to be the backbone and hourly bookings the topping-up.
Have a short conversation with your home insurer before the first booking. Some policies are relaxed about a let space and some are not, and you want the answer in writing rather than discovered during a claim. Broadly, damage to the driver's car is a matter for their motor insurer, while injury to a visitor on your property is what the liability section of your home policy exists for.
Check your paperwork too. Leaseholders should read the lease for anything restricting business use or subletting of parking, and owners with a mortgage should glance at its terms. If you rent your home, you need the landlord's blessing, since the space is theirs to let, not yours.
Then make access boring. Write instructions a stranger can follow at six in the morning in the rain, hand over fobs or gate codes through the platform's messaging so there is a record, and decide in advance what happens if the space is blocked when your driver arrives. A spare arrangement with a neighbour has rescued many a first review.
Income from letting a parking space counts as property income in HMRC's eyes. The property allowance lets you earn £1,000 of property income tax-free each tax year, as of early 2026, and if your total property income stays under it you generally have nothing to report.
Above the allowance you will need to tell HMRC, usually through Self Assessment, and you can deduct either the flat £1,000 allowance or your actual expenses, whichever leaves you better off. Rent-a-room relief does not apply here: it covers furnished rooms in your home, not the tarmac in front of it.
This is general information rather than advice, and thresholds change: check GOV.UK for current figures, and speak to an accountant or tax adviser about your own circumstances, particularly if you let several spaces or the sideline is starting to look like a business.
Last reviewed 15 August 2026. Rules and rates change; check the operator for current figures.
