Many homeowners with a big yard think about the same thing: a guest house or a tiny home to rent out. Leela Rea and her husband went another way. They built a glass greenhouse at the bottom of their Southern California garden, and it has changed the family’s life.
In short
- Leela Rea built a greenhouse in her backyard instead of an ADU or a tiny home.
- It cost almost $200,000 and took about 10 months to build.
- She rents it for intimate events and photoshoots, and says it brings in about $24,000 a month on average.
- That’s revenue, not pure profit: part of it goes back into running the space.
An idea from the wedding industry
Rea shared her story with Business Insider. “I’m not going to pretend that I just landed on this idea. I knew what I was doing,” she said. She previously worked in the wedding industry and saw a gap. Southern California has many beautiful venues, but few small, intimate ones. Some big venues have food-and-beverage minimums she estimates at $50,000 to $100,000. “If you’re having a rehearsal dinner or a baby shower, you’re not going to want to spend $50,000,” she explained.
A greenhouse she designed herself
“I’ve had greenhouses on my Pinterest board for 10 years,” Rea said. A company from England gave a quote far over budget, so she sketched her own design and asked a friend who is a welder to build it. She has applied for a patent.
The project cost almost $200,000, including electrical work, flooring and a fireplace, and took about 10 months. To finance it, the couple sold a couple of their real estate properties. The setting does a lot of the work: the house sits on a hill, the greenhouse below, between two seasonal creeks, with a path through about 150 French lavender plants.
Who rents it, and for how much
Proposals and photoshoots are frequent, but the highest-revenue bookings are intimate events: rehearsal dinners, bridal showers and baby showers, or a 20-person reception after a courthouse wedding. “Nobody really wants a Taylor Swift wedding,” Rea said.
At first, a day rental cost $3,000. Today, the minimum for an event is $7,500, and photoshoots start at $375 an hour. She hosts only about 10 to 15 intimate events a year; photoshoots and content shoots fill the rest. “On average, we earn about $24,000 renting out the greenhouse,” she said. Costs include $200 to $350 a month for refreshments and supplies, and $350 to $500 for a cleaning company.
What comes next
Manufacturers have contacted her, but Rea chose to work with the friend who built hers. They are manufacturing greenhouses in Southern California in three sizes, and already have preorders. “Some months, we’re earning as much as some people make in a year,” she said. Her family was skeptical at first: “Who would pay to rent out your house and little greenhouse?” A garden can be useful in many ways, as gardeners show with a simple tennis ball tossed into the yard or the rule for when to stop mowing.
The limit
The $24,000 is an average monthly figure given by Rea, before all costs; Business Insider doesn’t detail her net profit. Her success relies on her experience in weddings, a striking location and social media. Renting out a backyard for events also involves local permits, insurance and neighbors, which vary from one city to another.
That’s the story.
