What Makes a Parking Lot Desirable?

The parking industry generates more than $20 billion in annual revenue. With behaviors still sensitive to COVID-19 and more offices implementing back to work programs, car usage will continue to rise. Real estate owners across the globe should be more focused on how parking can support existing tenant revenues and capitalize on this growing demand. 

However, how does a property owner successfully capitalize on this demand? What makes a parking lot successful or desirable? Here are a few key elements that make a parking lot more desirable:

Location

As with any real estate: location, location, location. Where the parking lot is located will affect the demand, with locations in highly dense areas or close to nightlife, entertainment venues and office buildings generating more varied demand across the day.

Organization

Unorganized parking lots can cause confusion, traffic jams, and make for an unpleasant experience for the driver. Parking managers and parking facilities should have clear signage and direct instructions on how to enter, exit, and pay for the space.

Facility Condition/Security

Giving parkers a peace of mind when they park in your space is essential not only to attract parkers, but to retain them as well. Having an access-control device, on-site security, regular cleanings/maintenance, and good lighting are great ways to ensure your facility is in good condition, which can help to make your lot more desirable. Furthermore, better lit environments provide additional safety to parkers, so ensuring that there are no dark corners of the facility will make all parkers feel safer. 

Hours

Having flexible hours is another way for your lot to be desirable to more people. For example; having a lot available 24/7 means that you can cater your lot to people who need parking overnight and/or people who just need the lot for the day. However, by restricting your hours (ie. day-time, 7am to 6pm only), you’re also restricting the number of people that can have access to it.

EV-Charging

Between 2020 and 2021, North America’s plug-in EV registration almost doubled (96% increase). With the increased adoption of EV, offering EV-charging is a great way to increase the demand for your parking lot. 

---

A good example of a non-traditional parking asset that’s capitalized on their unused parking spaces via WhereiPark is the The Eighth and Grand apartments in DTLA. This multifamily apartment building was centrally located near the Staples Centre in DTLA and offered their 24/7, access-controlled parking to the public. Through WhereiPark, the Eighth and Grand apartments rented out 52 parking spots! This resulted in an incredible annualized NOI of over $84,000. With an assumption of a 4.5% cap rate, this helped increase the value of their multifamily asset by $1,870,000. 

Real estate owners no longer need to operate with empty spaces. Whether it’s a mall, multifamily apartment, commercial real estate owner, etc. If there’s any space at all, it can be an opportunity for ancillary revenue. 

Monetize your Spaces

Contact one of our dedicated team members today.

List your space today!

Author:  Bram Silver is a Business Development Specialist at WhereiPark. He specializes in working with multifamily property owners to help them create a new stream of ancillary revenue via their underutilized parking assets. He’s worked with some of the nation’s largest multifamily companies such as Avalon Bay, Greystar, Essex, Equity Residential, Bozzutto, and more.

How the Sharing Economy is Rapidly Changing How Large Groups of Vehicles Park

If you only have one car, parking is a pretty simple prospect. At night it lives in your driveway or garage, and during the day it sits in a space near your place of work. And if you happen to go to the mall or to visit family, most likely there is an available space for you to stash your ride for a few hours.

But what if you have five cars? Or 20? Or 100? All of a sudden, life gets more complex in a hurry. Fortunately, there are a number of flexible options that allow owners of automotive fleets to arrange and manage parking without having to go full-on Jay Leno and build their own garages.

One of the major issues with managing fleets is variability. For example, New York is typically swamped during the summer season as tourists from all over the world come to town. Surprisingly, car rental agencies are inundated with requests for vehicles, and typically have thousands of cars available. This makes a lot of sense in July and August, but by November demand decreases and some fleets or vehicles can sit idle until the spring thaw. Parking all of these cars, and keeping them safe from the elements, is a major problem.

What if there was a way to store an entire fleet for long stretches of time without having to own and operate a fully winterized lot? This is where the sharing economy can make a massive difference and improve the bottom line for companies facing storage issues. 

Looking for 10+ spaces for your fleet?

Contact one of our dedicated team members today.

Book a space today!

As it turns out, there are hundreds of hotels in the New York area, and many of them are fairly empty during the winter. And many of them have an indoor parking lot. It’s a perfect match of increased need and excess inventory – which is the exact problem that WhereiPark was created to solve. Using our platform, hotels can make their spaces available, and rental companies can lease them for as long as they need to. There are very few true win-win situations in life, but this is one of them. 

It's not just rental car companies that can benefit from this kind of synergy. Because parking is at a premium in most cities, while at the same time there is abundant excess inventory (that many just don’t know about). In fact, there is so much extra space that experts estimate that there are eight parking spaces for each car in the United States! It’s no wonder that cities like Dallas are actually looking to amend their codes to reduce the amount of parking that needs to be included in new construction projects. After all, most of these policies were adopted during the car-heavy 1960s.  

This shift to different forms of transportation has also created a perfect environment for operators of vehicle fleets to take advantage of the sharing economy and find affordable, convenient places to put their vehicles. This includes government agencies that operate thousands of cars (ranging from police cars to repair trucks) to car dealerships to construction companies that need to find spaces for workers for months or years at a time. It’s even an ideal solution for car clubs that require classic vehicles to be safely stored and kept away from bad weather. 

Owning a lot in an urban area is prohibitively expensive today, and many city parking structures are getting razed in favour of more profitable high rises and office blocks. Relying on the sharing economy to find spaces in nearby buildings, owners of fleets can fundamentally change the economics of their businesses and eliminate excess costs and administrative headaches that come along with managing their own parking facilities. It really is that easy. 

Looking for 10+ spaces for your fleet?

Contact one of our dedicated team members today.

Book a space today!

Edward Moon is a Growth Marketer at WhereiPark, a technology company that enables multifamily, residential, and commercial property owners to discover new revenue sources through innovative solutions that leverage unused parking spaces.

Parking: The Under-Utilized Asset

Whether we’d like to believe it or not, many North American cities were built to accommodate cars, even more than for people.

With cars being at the forefront of how we move, where we park becomes a major issue in how we access employment, service. and recreational premises. However, many property owners and real estate professionals don’t realize the opportunity that this brings.

Parking is a highly underutilized asset that can be leveraged better to meet the increasing demand coming from reduced minimum parking requirements and increasing vehicle sales.  Various advances in parking tech make it so much easier to earn more from your parking assets.  

However, it begins with understanding how valuable your parking spaces really are:  

• The parking industry is expected to grow 3.9% in 2022 and has a market size of $8bn

• According to the International Parking Institute, the parking industry generates more than $20 billion annually in revenue

• The United States has more than 105 million parking stalls

• Parking can boost the NOI of a property thus increasing property value 

• Parking garages/mixed-used assets have low-recurring capital requirements compared to more traditional real estate assets. 

• The construction of urban, mixed-use development, in addition to other commercial and residential construction, is expected to increase, further driving growth in demand for parking services

In a post Covid world, people are shifting away from public transit and more towards driving. With more vehicles on the road, the available parking spaces are also dwindling. As a result, parking spaces are a valuable commodity. With the demand for parking increases, parking garages/mixed use assets have a real opportunity to leverage their unused spaces.

The existing supply of parking, especially in urban areas, provides an exciting opportunity for those interested in boosting or expanding their existing revenue streams. With the proper tools and resources, parking facilities can provide a consistent and stable income, with the prospect of long-term revenue growth potential.

Implementing new strategies such as introducing technology to help facilitate and manage existing parking assets can have a huge benefit. Companies can now manage lot enforcement, payments, and visitor restrictions creating an easy way to passively earn extra income by renting out unused space. For consumers, this means more available parking spaces at better rates, especially in more urban environments. For business owners/property managers it means turning a once unused or under-utilized asset into a new revenue stream. 

Parking can is often an overlooked and underused asset. With access to new technologies and an understanding of how valuable parking is, you can turn slab of concrete into a stable income source, all while offering a much-needed service.

Monetize your Spaces

Contact one of our dedicated team members today.

List your space today!

Author: Sam Robins is a Business Development Specialist at WhereiPark. He specializes in working with multifamily property owners to help them create a new stream of ancillary revenue via their underutilized parking assets. He’s worked with some of the nation’s largest multifamily companies such as Avalon Bay, Greystar, Essex, Equity Residential, Bozzutto, and more.

Construction Logistics: Parking

Parking. Oh, parking. An integral component for construction logistics (especially in urban settings), but oh, so annoying. Although parking may seem like a trivial part of construction logistics, having adequate parking may be more important than you think.

The obvious benefit of having adequate parking is that your team isn’t left to their own devices to find secure and affordable spaces. Providing the benefit of free parking for your team would boost morale and provide for a more enjoyable work experience.

Providing parking can also help you cut costs. Making sure your team is onsite and on time is essential as even a 10-minute delay can compound into much greater costs for the employer. Providing a safe and reliable parking option that your team can use would eliminate the risk of your team wasting time having to look for parking or having to park far away from the site.

Offering off-site parking also allows for a safer experience for the team. Often, the site is used as a laydown space for raw materials and heavy machinery so having people park onsite can increase the chances of a workplace mishap or injury. Providing off-site parking would allow you to use the site strictly for work and laydown space as opposed to a place where people and normal cars can congregate.

Parking is an important part of construction logistics, but it’s often not a priority and is annoying to deal with. However, companies such as constructionparking.com simplify the process and manage all parking, payments, shuttles, and other mobility needs. They work directly with your budget and come up with a custom mobility plan that really works. The best part is that they don’t charge anything for this service (other than the monthly parking rate of course). They earn their money via real estate partners when they generate parking revenue for them.

Or if you’d rather just deal with a lot directly, companies such as whereipark.com or spacer.com prioritize providing affordable spaces and make it easy for you to book a parking lot near your next project. It’s as easy as inserting your project address on their map, booking the space, and your good to go!

So… what’re you waiting for? Book parking for you next project today!