Anyone that owns rental properties can rent out their houses and living space to short-term tenants with Airbnb. In fact, if you’re a homeowner and have an extra bedroom, you could even rent out that space for extra cash. Professional landlords can easily take advantage of this service, but it’s also for any homeowner that wants to make an income renting living space.
Hotel rooms can be expensive these days. They’re also mostly run by corporations, so the people that are helping you out at hotels may not seem very friendly or helpful. Some people find staying in a home to be more comfortable when they’re out of town on business or taking a vacation trip with their family. Airbnb helps connect vacationers with homeowners that want to rent out their space.
Why use Airbnb?
Anyone that owns a house can potentially make money on Airbnb. This can scale anywhere from a part-time side hustle where you rent a single room in your home, up to a full-time home rental business with multiple properties. What you want to do with it is entirely up to you and the amount of space you have available to rent.
Some people make a full-time living just renting out rooms or houses that they own, but this can scale down to any level. Maybe you struggle with your mortgage payment each month and want some help with it so you rent out your spare bedroom half of the days each month. This can be especially profitable if you live in a vacation area where a lot of tourists visit. You can often undercut hotel costs and still make a nice amount of money for yourself.
This can even work out to your advantage if you live alone and just enjoy having people around sometimes to chat with. By renting a spare bedroom, you would have someone else contributing to your monthly bill payments and you would have company around the house whenever you wanted it.
Business Expenses
Airbnb charges most hosts a 3% fee on the subtotal of each purchase. This puts 97% of the rental price that you set and the cleaning fee into your pocket. They’re actually making more than 3% from each sale, but the additional costs are added on top of your rental prices and charged to your guests instead.
Your other expenses for this type of side hustle will come from maintenance fees, cleaning services and the cost of the home itself. You may also need to buy certain items to make the room you’re renting out more comfortable for guests, such as a decent bed, clean sheets and towels for a bathroom.
To create a more themed experience, as I’ll talk about later in this guide, there could be even more experiences to set up your property cater to that experience. However, if you do end up needing to spend a lot of extra money to prepare your property for visitors, then you should be able to charge more for nightly stays to recoup that investment over time.
Home Rental Problems
The prospect of being a landlord can be terrifying for some people. It’s a lot of responsibility providing people with a place to live. There’s also the potential to get bad tenants, so you end up with years of headaches or maybe even having to take them to court to evict them.
Having short-term tenants can be much less of a hassle though. On Airbnb, you’re not leasing your house for people to live in for an entire year. Most guests have short stays that range from a single night up to a couple of weeks. This gives you people that are on business trips and taking vacations instead of people that want to live on your property. You don’t usually have to worry about evictions or problems that come along with longer term tenancies.
This type of situation makes it lower stress, especially when you have a guest that you don’t like for any reason. You don’t have to put up with those people long-term to have a successful business, so it’s easier to bear a bad guest when you know they’ll be gone in a few days.
Themed Vacation Experience
Airbnb gives you a unique opportunity with a home rental business that is more geared towards vacations. Some people don’t just want to stay in a room for a night. They’re looking for an entire experience to make for a more memorable vacation. As the homeowner, you’re complete in control here and can offer whatever you want.
Maybe you have a house on a horse farm in Montana. Instead of simply renting out your home to stay in for a few nights, you can offer an entire Western themed vacation experience for your guests. This could include working with horses, riding them, and a wide variety of other activities. By adding more to your home rental experience, you’re able to offer things that others cannot and guests will be more impressed with their visits.
Another major benefit to providing a more themed experience is that you can charge more money per night to stay at your place. Guests won’t just pay for the room itself, but also for the added experience, so this is more valuable.