As stay-at-home orders rose in March in April due to the coronavirus pandemic, TaskRabbit, an online marketplace that connects customers with freelance laborers, experienced a dip in requests for home repairs and moving services while demand for errands and delivery services rose, according to new data.
Now, with economies reopening across the country, home repairs and moving service requests are steadily rising once again, a TaskRabbit spokesperson confirmed.
“Over the past month or so, as we’ve seen many of the regions and jurisdictions where TaskRabbit operates move forward with varying reopening plans, tasks in the Furniture Assembly, Minor Home Repairs, and Moving Help categories have become the most widely requested,” TaskRabbit spokesperson Rebecca Weill told Inman.
Historically, the summer season has been a peak time for moving, and according to TaskRabbit, it looks like the pandemic hasn’t much deterred people who need to relocate. Between May 24 and June 24 moving jobs on TaskRabbit accounted for 17 percent of total jobs booked on the platform. During the same time period the year before, that number was only slightly higher, at 20 percent of total jobs booked.
The company has also experienced new trends, including an increase in requests from residents in densely populated cities such as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, asking for help transporting belongings out of an apartment and into a storage unit.
Additionally, the company has seen more requests for help moving from one apartment to another in the same apartment building — or to an apartment only a few blocks away — as well as more requests for a worker hired through the platform to conduct a move entirely without the hiring tenant ever being present.
TaskRabbit has encouraged anyone using the platform to follow guidelines of their local health authorities during their transactions.
“As more jobs are booked to help clients inside their homes, we continue to advise all TaskRabbit users to follow the regulations established by their local public health authorities,” Weill said. “We’re strongly encouraging users to continue safety best practices, including the use of masks, social distancing, frequent hand-washing and contactless tasks when possible, in order to stay healthy and help protect their community.”
