Hi there, Mrs. 1500 today, asking about airbnb.com and would you use it to rent out your house. But first, let’s recap last week’s answers to the question, What is your favorite, out of the house, frugal family activity?
Aunt Beulah started us off with a walk. She suggested some ways to keep it fun for the kids, like imitating a way that dad walks, then each kid takes a turn making up funny ways to walk. Keeps it interesting and keeps the kids actually walking, instead of our kids’ favorite thing to do during a walk, complain that their legs hurt.
This suggestion was reiterated by Writing2Reality, Brian, FI Pilgrim, Holly @ Club Thrifty, Mrs. PoP from Planting our Pennies, This Life on Purpose and Amanda @ Passionately Simple Life.
I also discovered new activities I had never heard of. Ree Klein from Escaping Dodge suggested Rock Hounding. ??? I had to look it up, and discovered this can be a fun learning event for the kids. It is basically going out and finding rocks, but way more than that. The girls love picking up rocks – they don’t even have to be pretty! I routinely remove rocks from my home and put them back outside…
Michelle from Fit is the New Poor reminded me about geocaching. Geocaching, in a nutshell, is taking clues from GPS coordinates, and finding a small cache of treasures, usually inexpensive trinkets, and then replacing it with one of your own. Like a treasure hunt, but outdoors. So excited to try this.
Thanks for all the responses.
As you may know, we are adding a partial second story to our house. The guys come over today to start enclosing the garage, and I am so happy I could sing!!! Ahem.
Anyway, we have discussed the possibility of using airnb.com to rent out a portion of our house periodically. Airbnb lets you rent out your whole home or even just a room. We would be able to put a lock on the portion of our house that we sleep in, so no one would wander in. Also, the part of ours that guest sleep in would be away from the part that we sleep in. Airbnb isn’t super well known right now, so we wouldn’t have a ton of traffic. And we don’t live in a tourist mecca, so we would be lucky to get one renter per month in the beginning.
Another way to use the space is for out of town clients who come to look at houses with me (I am studying to get my real estate license.)
We haven’t used their service yet, but have a reservation for a room in Omaha for next year’s Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. We started looking at nearby hotel rooms, and the cheapest we could find was $200 per night. Um, no thanks. For $45 per night, we have the room in someone’s house, less than a mile from the convention center where the meeting is held. (Bonus is that it is located across the street from the “best donuts in the world” and we love a good donut.)
Airbnb has all different types of places for rent. You can rent space on a couch, a room, an entire floor of a house or the whole house itself. Not only can YOU rate the person renting out their space, but they can rate you, too. So if someone contacts you about renting your place, and their rating says they are a horrible houseguest, you can turn them down.
So, would you use airbnb to rent out space in your house? Have you already? Please share your experiences!
I don’t know what it is, but I just couldn’t possibly imagine renting out my house – or any part of it – on Airbnb. My strong rejection of it is a bit confusing, even to me. I mean, I own two rental properties, which three units – and my very first house was a duplex where I rented out the first floor. So it’s not like there’s an aversion to being a landlord or renting out property I own. I think it’s just the very personal nature of my own space – my own things. I’d feel like I’d need to lock all my stuff up in storage before I’de ever consider it.
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Well, our stuff is fairly worthless, so I can’t see the need to protect any of it. Honestly, our TV is probably the most valuable thing in our house. And even that isn’t worth the price of admission…
I haven’t used it yet, but for any future traveling it is definitely going to be something I check out. As for using it to rent out space, this is something I’d have to look into further, plus provide a means to segregate my living space from the space I’m renting. While I don’t have children like yourselves, the safety concerns from having kids in the house with a stranger is definitely something to consider, and I like the locked separation.
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I think, for the most part, people who are looking to rent on this site aren’t creepy weirdos. Of course, creepy weirdos can make it through any screening process if they try hard enough. I am not cavalier about the safety of my children, but I think a couple of strong locks would do the trick.
I don’t know that I would be able to rent out anything at my house except the shed– it would just be weird, as small as ours is!
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We are currently in a 2 bed, 1 bath house. I have seen rentals as small as just a couch. Still cheaper than a hotel room…
Hi Mrs. 1500,
First, thanks for the shout out! I’ve been rockhounding for years — apparently the kid in me never stopped picking up rocks and bringing them home. You should see how many I still have!
As for Airbnb, I think it’s very interesting. Our house is super small, but if we wanted to try living somewhere else for a while this might be a good way to cover the housing costs in the new location. I do worry about someone damaging my property; however, I’ve realized over the years of doing home improvements that a house is nothing but dirt, wires, pipes and insulation between the pretty-painted sheetrock. Paint and sheetrock are pretty easy to repair!
I’m going to check this one out further and maybe add it to my “Resources to Save You Money” list on my site.
Ree Klein recently posted…A Simple 2-Step Test to Ensure You’re Prepared for Retirement
We will let you know how it goes after the annual meeting in May. I am excited about the prospect. They do have reviews of each property, so you can skip the places that have skeezy reviews…
We have thought about it. What’s really neat is that when we used airbnb for our honeymoon, we got an email asking us if we would like to rent our place out while we were gone. We really considered it, but we would need a custodian in case something happened.
Renting a one bedroom apartment in our area on airbnb was going for about $110 a night. It was pretty tempting! We would certainly consider it in the future.
Michelle @fitisthenewpoor recently posted…Black Friday Story- Dee from Color Me Frugal
I would say, before you rent it out, go through the house with an objective look. Make sure everything works and make notes about what you do offer, like coffee pot, tea bags, fresh fruit, etc. I think a little goes a long way. I would much rather stay at some place that offered breakfast or coffee or something for the same price as a place that does not. And honestly, how much does it cost to make breakfast? Spending an extra $5 or $10 to get people to refer you or come back and use you again is worth so much more than $5 or $10…
We used airbnb in Washington, DC, and would use it again to go somewhere else. At the time it was cheaper than getting a hotel room. Our hosts were awesome. We just rented a room in their house. We were never there. We only came home to sleep.
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I agree, we are just going to sleep in the room. We went to the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting last year. We didn’t plan ahead, and couldn’t find a room anywhere near the convention center. (I guess this is a big deal…) So we ended up 30 minutes away. Literally drove 30 minutes just to sleep, then back to the convention center again. We shall see…
We used airbnb for a race once and we’ll be using it for the Berkshire meeting as well this year. I think you guys grabbed the $45 place before we could book! Ours is $55, but still a win over the hotel prices!
As for renting our house, I don’t think we’d be interested in short term rentals. We like our privacy, so having strangers in the house would be a bit weird when we were there. And I might worry about damage or mistreatment if we weren’t there. Long term, though… I can see us wanting to take a year or so to travel sometime in the future and we’ve talked about renting the house in that scenario.
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Sorry for scooping you… I will bring you a donut from across the street! I can see a longer-term rental being more stable than a short term one, but if you can get someone to take care of it for you, maybe the short term rental could pay your mortgage while you are gone.
I’ve been looking into AirB&B for our upcoming trip overseas – it seems like you can score amazing deals and everyone I know of has had great experiences with it. I’d like to rent out a room on there, as well, and make a little extra money that way, but I feel like most people offer accommodations in the city.. I don’t think the suburbs is convenient for travelers!
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The suburbs may not be convenient for most travelers, but maybe someone wants to stay in the city you live in? You never know until you try it out…
I would not use AirBnB to rent out part of my house. My wife and I are not neat freaks and while our house is far from being disgusting, I would not feel comfortable renting it out to a stranger. Couple that with the fact I have a small child, I just don’t feel comfortable doing it.
I have never used it for overseas travel either. I usually stay in hotels (on points or cheap rates) or in hostels so I wouldn’t always save that much. I think it is a great service, but just haven’t experienced it myself.
Yeah, not being a neat freak myself, it would force me to keep the house more tidy. Which I consider a bonus. I want a clean house, it just is so difficult with small kids…
No one would ever airbnb a room in my house, because I do not live in a touristy area. However, if I lived in a city or a part of town where that was normal and I could fetch something like $200+ per night, I would definitely think about doing it.
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You never know what someone will rent until you give it a shot. Perhaps someone in your town is going to have too many houseguests over the holidays, and they need some more room?
I’d never get Dad to agree to renting out a room in our house, and for the same reason we’d never use airbnb – he likes his privacy too much. He even gets a little antsy when we’ve stayed at “normal” B&Bs. I have no objections to it if I were traveling alone, but generally, when I’m traveling alone, I’m on the company’s dime and stay in their pre-approved hotels, so I haven’t used it.
I can see that side of it, too. I just like saving money more than extra privacy.
I don’t think I can rent out my own house. I just don’t trust people like that with my personal stuff.
But, I’m impressed that you’re going to Omaha for the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting! Awesome!
Like I said above, we don’t really have anything valuable. I think anyone breaking into our house would leave, assuming we were poorer than they are…
We currently rent out a room full time, but we’ve considered trying renting it out on a short term basis. We just recently tried Airbnb for the first time as a consumer but it’s gone so well that I’d be confident using them as a ‘seller’.
In a lot of ways, I think a short term rental is a lot easier of a pill to swallow than opening your home for months or years at a time. If the tenant sucks or it just isn’t the right situation, you only have to put up with it for a few days.
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Exactly. How bad can someone be for a short time? I am not talking family. I think people would put a little more effort into being a nice guest when they don’t know the person…
My friend recently used Air BnB for a milestone birthday party – she scored a beautiful place in downtown that was on the 30th floor (something in the 30’s, I can’t remember). It was such a win since you still had the downtown vibe with the scenic views and lights, but you got a chill place to relax with your loved ones. It was such a great idea!
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I used airbnb to find a nice, safe, not scuzzy place to stay when I moved for work and my new home was not yet ready for move-in… worked out great and I’d use it again, but uncertain about hosting given the permanent disaster area that two children cause in my home…
Boy, I hear that. It will force me to have the house cleaner than current. Which is a plus…
I would totally do it, as I am a “more the merrier” type person and I like to have people over and love to meet people from other places, etc. We are having a large family get together in January and since my house is full, I suggested Airbnb to my out of town relatives hoping the cost savings might enable them to come for the festivities.
I also thought it would be a great idea to use Airbnb check out other cities that we are considering moving/retiring too. Like Plano/Dallas. My husband and I are going at the end of next summer and it would be great to be able to check out the locals and stay in an actual neighborhood. I have perused the site and it seems most people are friendly and are not just interested in making an extra buck. I know there are plenty of weirdos out there, but I think there are more friendlies than not.
On the flip side, I live 20 minutes from downtown San Diego so I probably could rent my house out fairly easily. My neighborhood is a bit dumpy though and not in a very trendy area. But really, like most people, they just need a place to sleep. I’d rent to the 1500’s for sure 🙂
I probably would but right now we are renting and so there might be additional liability to look into, and we’d need to inform our landlord. Not sure if he’d be ok with it!
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I wonder how that would work out? Ultimately, you are responsible for what happens to your place while renting, so in theory your landlord is covered. I would check with him, first…
Our leases do not allow sub-letting, which I think is technically what renting out a room would be if you’re not the unit owner.
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I think it would be like living with a roommate, except for you wouldn’t see them as often and you’d have to clean up after them when they left, so I don’t think I could do it but it looks like you want to retire early enough that it might be a good, feasible possibility for you!
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I’d certainly do it! Beyond the money, which is good by the way from all the accounts I have read online…its a good way of meeting a diverse set of people and sharing stories with them….you never know who might be a guest at your home 🙂
It would have to be a seperate space though where they don’t encroach on my “sacred” personal space unless I want them to!
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If we block off a part of my house we can rent a room which would rent well. I live in a highly desirable tourist town that has no hotels. The people that do airbnb here do quite well. Alas the wife wouldn’t agree. When you come to Hawaii I’ll let you guys know where all the good eats are, especially Pizza.
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I don’t know what it is, but I just couldn’t possibly imagine renting out my house – or any part of it – on Airbnb.