Nokisaki is an online real estate marketplace in Japan helping land owners make use of even the tiniest spaces.
The service looks for slices of dead, unused or underused space in urban areas and rents them out for short periods of time. Starting at $15, vendors, or other street-based businesses can have a place to work from. The company also rents full size offices when they’re between long-term renters.
In Tokyo, where every sliver of land is at a premium, a few feet of unused private property near the front entrance of an apartment building can be used to sell muffins. A patch of storefront space transforms into an ad hoc vegetable stand for a farmer or a consulting space for a fortune-teller.
Yoshihide Ito tells his experience
Those spaces can be reserved at Nokisaki for short periods of time—starting from three hours—and for as little as $15 total. The spots are granted on a first-come, first-served basis and the rental times and prices are set by landlords.
Now this is cool.