The ladder is already on your street.
Most of what we own sits unused. HoodShare lets the households near you lend each other the drill, the tent, the wallpaper steamer — the things everyone needs twice a year and nobody needs to own twice.
The drill you lend in March is the carpet cleaner you borrow in June.
There is no lender side and no borrower side to sign up for. Everyone here is both.
“I need it for one afternoon.”
Search what households near you have listed, ask to borrow it, and arrange the handover between yourselves. Nothing changes hands but the thing itself.
“It is sitting in the shed anyway.”
List what you would happily lend: a name, a photo if you want one, and whether it stays within your neighbourhoods or reaches further. It stays yours. You are only saying you are open to being asked.
Why it exists
Asking is the hard part. Not the lending.
The pressure washer comes out twice a year. The tent comes down from the loft for one weekend in August. The wallpaper steamer gets hired when somebody finally does the hall, and four doors down there is one sitting in a cupboard doing nothing.
Neighbours lent each other things long before anybody built software for it. The part that was always awkward is knowing who has what, and asking without knocking on doors to find out.
How it works
Three steps, and one of them is a wait.
Setting up takes a few minutes. Being let into a neighbourhood takes as long as an administrator takes to read the request — it is the one part of this that is not instant, and it is the part that makes the rest of it safe.
Set up your household
A household is one home, with one address. Everyone who lives there joins it with their own account, and any of them can lend, borrow, and say when something is in use.
Join or start a neighbourhood
Neighbourhoods are small groups, usually a street or a block. Find the ones near you and ask to join; an administrator approves your household, so a neighbourhood stays the people who actually live in it. If no group covers your street, start one — it is centred on your home, and you become its admin.
List what you would lend
A name, a photo if you want one, and how far you are happy for the thing to travel. Then see what is shared near you, ask to borrow, and arrange the handover the way neighbours always have.
If your street is empty
You will probably be first on your street.
HoodShare is new. There is a real chance nobody near you has joined yet, and pretending otherwise would be exactly the sort of thing that should make you sceptical of it.
So here is what one household can do on an empty street.
List what you would lend.
It takes a few minutes, and it is the part that has to exist before anything else can.
Start the neighbourhood for your street.
It is centred on your home and you become its admin, so it is there for whoever looks next, and letting them in is your decision rather than a wait for somebody else’s.
Share something publicly.
An item shared publicly reaches any household inside a radius you set, anywhere from fifty metres to ten kilometres, and it does not need a neighbourhood to exist at all.
There is no invite button for a neighbourhood. People find the group you started and ask to join, and you approve them — so the useful thing you can do today is the part that does not need anybody else.
Asking
A request, not a transaction.
A request to borrow arrives with two buttons on it: Lend it, and Not this time. There is no haggling, no deposit, no deadline and no stars afterwards. Saying no is one tap and needs no reason — and it reaches the person who asked, instead of leaving them to work it out from silence.
One screen holds both halves of it: what people have asked of you, and what you have asked for. Anything still waiting on an answer sits at the top, oldest first, because the person who asked last week has been waiting longest.
What other people see
Your neighbours see the door. Nobody else does.
Every item is shared one of two ways, and you choose per item.
Shared with your neighbourhoods means only households approved into the same groups as you can see it. They do see your address, because they are your neighbours and they need to know which door to knock on.
Shared publicly means anyone with an account whose home is inside your chosen radius can see the item — including people you have never met — and none of them sees your address or your coordinates. A public listing shows a distance rounded into hundred-metre bands, about 600 m away, and nothing else. It is rounded so that the same listing seen from several places cannot be used to work out where you live.
- You choose the radius, anywhere from fifty metres to ten kilometres.
- Sharing publicly means acknowledging a warning first, and the server refuses the listing without it — the warning is not a screen you can scroll past.
- You can stop sharing an item publicly at any time, and it leaves the public index immediately.
No money.
There are no fees, no subscription and no payments between neighbours. There is nothing to pay for, because nothing here is for sale.
No adverts, no analytics.
No advertising, no third-party analytics, no crash reporting, no trackers and no third-party cookies, in the app and on this page. It is not funded by knowing things about you.
No location permission.
You type your address in yourself. The app does not read your device’s location, and asks for no location permission on any platform.
About your address
Why it asks where you live.
Distance is the whole idea: your address decides which neighbourhoods you can join and how far your things reach. You type it in, and then the service is careful with it — and the rules are enforced by the server rather than left to the app to get right.
- Your exact address is shown only to households in a neighbourhood you have both been approved into.
- Anything shared publicly shows an approximate distance — “about 600 m away” — and never a street or a pin.
- You choose how far a public listing reaches, and can stop sharing it at any time.
The privacy policy says all of this again, at length.
Built for streets, not marketplaces.
No money changes hands
Nothing is for sale and nothing is for hire. This is lending, which is what neighbours were already doing before anyone built an app for it.
Approved neighbours only
Joining a neighbourhood takes an administrator’s approval, and nothing on HoodShare is visible without an account. What you share with your neighbourhoods is seen by households that have been let in, not by the internet and not by a search engine.
Share wider when it suits
Something you are happy to lend to anyone nearby can be shared publicly within a radius you choose — without giving your address away.
No chat, no ratings, no scores
There is no direct messaging. The only free text one member sends another is the note on a borrow request or a request to join, and it is capped in length. Nobody is scored out of five afterwards.
Use the judgement you would use lending to anyone else on your street.
HoodShare does not verify that an address is real, that a person is who they say they are, or that a ladder is safe to stand on. The terms say so in those words, because honesty here is more useful than reassurance: it is a noticeboard and a way of asking, and it is not a party to anything you lend.
Every listing, every household and every note on a borrow request can be reported from inside the app, with child safety the first reason offered. A report records what you were looking at, taken from our own copy of it rather than from anything you have to describe, so it still means something after the content has been deleted. A person reads every one.
Questions
The awkward ones.
Is it any use if I am the only one on it?
Not for borrowing, no — and it would be no use pretending otherwise. What is useful on the first day is the part that does not need anybody else: set your household up, list two or three things you would happily lend, and start the neighbourhood for your street so it is there for whoever looks next. An item shared publicly reaches any household inside a radius you set, which goes further than your own street.
Is it free?
Yes. There is no charge, no subscription and nothing to enter a card into. We are not going to pretend to know what it will cost in a year, because we do not — but the version you can install today has nothing in it that watches you, and that was a decision rather than an oversight.
Is there an iPhone app?
No. The app on Google Play is the Android one. HoodShare also runs in a web browser, at the same address and with the same account.
Does it track where I am?
No. You type your address in once. The app asks for no location permission on any platform and does not read your device’s location.
Who can see my address?
Households approved into the same neighbourhood groups as you. Anything you share publicly carries no address and no coordinates — only a distance rounded to the nearest hundred metres.
What stops anyone joining my neighbourhood?
An administrator approves each household before it can see what the members share, and approval admits that whole household. What approval does not do is prove anything: we do not verify that an address is real, and the terms say so.
Can I message somebody?
Not in the way you mean. There is no direct messaging. A request to borrow carries a short note, the owner answers with Lend it or Not this time, and the rest happens at the door.
How will I know someone has asked?
It appears in the app’s own notifications list, which is the one place it always turns up. Email is on by default and can be switched off under Account. Browser notifications are an extra you turn on yourself, and they work on the web only.
What if something comes back broken?
That is between the two households, exactly as it would be if you had knocked on the door. HoodShare does not own, inspect, test, insure, deliver or guarantee any item, and it cannot make anybody bring your drill back.
How do I delete my account?
From inside the app, under Account, in two taps. It is immediate and it cannot be undone. Your profile, your notification history and your memberships go. If nobody else lives in your household, the household goes too — its address, its items, all of it. If somebody does, the household stays with them: one person cannot delete a home out from under the people they live with.
Start with your own street.
Set up your household, list two or three things you would be happy to lend, and start or join the neighbourhood for your street. That part takes a few minutes and does not depend on anybody else having arrived first.
Get started Or get the Android app on Google Play.