I’ve just found that yours2share has climbed to third place in the listings if you search on Google for landshare, and following a few links as you do, found an enormous amount of information on allotments, growing your own fruit and veg, organic produce and sustainable food.  I suppose that given “Britain is a nation of gardeners”, I shouldn’t be surprised, but nonetheless there is a the huge amount of useful information here.

So I thought I’d point out the ones that looked the most interesting/comprehensive to me:

For everything to do with allotments, National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners

Promoting everything friendly food, the Soil Association

All about organic food, Garden Organic

For city farms and community gardens, Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens

Sustainable food at SustainWeb and in particular its list of projects

And there are loads more, but these seemed to me to be the central hubs for everything else.  I’m going to have to stop now, I’ve been buried in these websites for a couple of hours now.

Here are the current garden and allotment sharing listings on yours2share.

Swap a villa for a boat in Mallorca, Spain

From the beginning I’ve often been asked if yours2share does swaps as well as enable people to share stuff:  sharing and swapping have a similar ethos.  Now with yours2share I’ve already got quite enough to chew, and I was aware that there are many property swap or exchange websites.  So I’ve always reckoned yours2share would stick to sharing.

But this week I’ve been asked three times about holiday home swaps and an interesting ad was posted, so I thought I’d do a bit more finding out about the swap/exchange websites to see who the big players are.  I think the key information is how many properties are listed, what does it cost, and the website’s Page Rank.

Home Exchange, 26,000 properties, about £70/ad, PR=6

1st Home Exchange, 7,000 properties, about £45/year, PR=5

Home Exchange Vacation, 3,300 properties about £17/three months, PR=4

Homebase Hols, 2,000 properties, £29/year, PR=5

Homelink, probably over 3,000 properties but hard to work out, £115/year, PR=5

I haven’t used any of them, but all the above look pretty comprehensive.  I would guess most people pick the website that has the most listings in the specific locations that interest them.

I also had a quick look to see if there are any websites doing boat swaps and other major item swaps, and there are a few, but none appear to have really got going.  As another variant of this, someone posted an ad on yours2share recently to swap time in his seven bed villa in Mallorca, Spain, in return for use of a motor yacht in Mallorca, with the specific requirement that he wanted to get to know the swapper first and for this to be a long term share/swap arrangement.  Nowhere seems to do this kind of share/swap, so I’ve left the ad on yours2share.

Prince Madoc will have identical sail pattern & masts to Vixen II, shown here

An interesting boat share ad was posted on yours2share over the weekend.  The Prince Madoc, a 65 foot stays’l schooner, is being lovingly restored by Dave Denning down in Cardiff, Wales.  The restoration has so far taken ten years, and he has worked on it full time for the last four years, accompanied by a string of students from around the world.

Dave now needs to find some further funding to complete the work, hence the ad looking for investors.

The plan is for the Prince Mado to become a dive-charter vessel sailing around the world so people can sail such a magnificent boat and dive in wonderful waters.

Here’s a link to the ad.

Here’s a great new horse sharing case study: a result from yours2share.  I’ve been talking to Georgie Lynch for a few months, when I first spoke to her she thought she’d found a sharer, but then this rider didn’t have enough experience.  A couple of months later Georgie emailed me to tell me that she had found another sharer through yours2share called Charlotte Sheringham and a few weeks into the arrangement it is going splendidly.

Here are the horse share listings, rather a lot of them!

I use Constant Contact (and they’re great) to handle all yours2share’s newsletters and I’ve just found some pleasing information.  They have a section detailing the aggregated response rates for the vast numbers of newsletters they send out and yours2share’s compares really favourably with them on every count.

Overall yours2share is currently averaging a 33% open rate, 28% click through rate and 2.7% bounce rate.  These rates are miles better than all the categories given, only Craft related newsletters achieve a higher opening rate at 38%.  Please forgive the smug expression on my face.

Sustrans , the sustainable transport charity, is running a novel variation on the “be good” day, by holding a “Change your world” week from the 29th June to the 4th July.  In this case the form of “being good” is agreeing to swap a car journey for another means of transport (walking, cycling or public transport etc)  or car sharing for the trip.

I spent several years working for public transport consultancies (yes, I’ve done all kinds of things you didn’t expect) and you’ll always find me on a train if its feasible, which in Norfolk isn’t too often, although I often use the train to get to London.

yours2share enables people to find partners for car shared ownership or informal car clubs.

I’ve just been told that yours2share has been selected as one of the Top 100 businesses going forward to the next stage of the Barclays Trading Places awards. I am naturally delighted, having overcome my intial thoughts ” did only 101 apply” and “could only 100 understand the exam questions”.

The entry will go before the Judging Panel and will choose 25 semi finalists. If yours2share is successful, I’ll let you know sometime in mid July.

This has spurred me on to find a few more awards to enter yours2share for.  This listing by Boost Marketing has been very useful in identifying them.  Only problem is that writing each entry is very similar to taking an exam, and I haven’t taken any of them for many many years.  I suddenly identify with students again, except most of them have now finished their GSCEs, A levels and finals, and I’ve just found four interesting looking awards to enter by the end of July.  Hey ho…. back to polishing the weasel words.

yours2share had a good mention in this month’s edition of The Field in an article called Staying Afloat – surf the let.  Here’s a some more explanation about fractional rental and a case study about Sheldon Manor in Wiltshire where several cottages and a wing are now let to several tenants who each rent for eight to ten weeks a year.

I’ve finally managed to get yours2share’s video onto YouTube!

If you want to see it in “high definition”, well much better quality, click here.

A few weeks ago I met Gemma Thompson, a life coach and owner of a local Suffolk magazine Roundabout at a WiRE business networking meeting in Suffolk.  I explained what yours2share is all about, as one does, and she surprised me by saying that she had bought a house with her parents and sister’s family, in which they all now live.

I had to find out more.

The arrangement came about when Gemma decided to move back to Suffolk with her nine year old daughter.  The house next door to her sister Emma was available to let, and she thought this was the perfect solution.  However her father thought Gemma wanted to move back to live with her parents was concerned that there wasn’t sufficient room.  He suggested that they all buy one property and live together.

Gemma liked the idea, but didn’t expect her sister, together with her husband and 16 year old son, to be interested, but they were.  Emma’s only condition was that she didn’t want to move away from the village of Alderton.  They thought finding a five bedroom house here would be difficult, but the following weekend the perfect house came onto the market. 90 days later in July 2008 all the three families moved in.

Everyone has their own bedroom, but the living room, dining room, kitchen and gardens are all shared.  They eat together about five nights a week, sharing the cooking between them but the arrangements are flexible.  All the food and household expenses are paid from a fund to which they all contribute every month.  They have regular meetings to discuss any issues. If someone wants to buy something for a communal room, say a new picture, everyone has to agree beforehand. Gemma, Emma and their father all work from home so they all need a working area.  They are just about to build a log cabin in the garden creating an office for them all.  Emma Aldous is a graphic designer, artist and photographer and their father works for Holiday Property Bond.

I was curious about how they managed times when one group wanted the house to themselves, maybe for certain visitors.  Gemma explained that they had all agreed to make themselves scarce on these rare occasions.  Whenever her sister’s in-laws come to visit, she and her daughter go out for dinner!

Gemma is clearly delighted with the arrangement and there are some obvious huge advantages:

• Bigger house and garden
• Much lower cost of housing, household expenses and food
• More time with their family
• More adult and children’s company for the children
• Built-in babysitting and flexibility for single mum Gemma
• As her parents get older, it will be easier for Gemma and Emma to manage
• Advantages for inheritance tax

As I’m well aware, these arrangements can be fantastic as long as the people have thought things through properly at the outset, and have a proper contract in place.

At the beginning Gemma’s family had extensive discussions to work out how to make the arrangement work and this is defined in the trust deed and a financial document covering the monthly payments to cover expenses.  They worked their way through many “what if” scenarios.  One key decision was that no-one could leave the arrangement for the first two years, and after that the other owners allowed to buy out any leaver.  If this couldn’t be done, then the house would be sold.

It sounds like a model fractional ownership arrangement, long may it continue!