It’s been a little over one year now since Mr. Dink and I embarked on our journey as Airbnb hosts. (Ok, it’s been well over a year by now – apologies for my lack of posting for the last 6 months!) Either way, in honor of this milestone (and because better late than never, right?), we thought it was about time to update the community on how this experiment has been going.
You can read more about how and why we decided to experiment with Airbnb hosting in last year’s post.
The short version of the backstory is that we have a mother-in-law suite/attached apartment at our primary residence. Mr. Dink created this space when he bought the house in 2015. The previous owner had put on an addition to the house to use as her master bedroom, and Mr. Dink (being the carpenter, business owner, and visionary that he is) had the inspiration to turn it into a mother-in-law suite immediately upon first seeing the house.
He knew he didn’t need all that extra space, and it was the perfect configuration for turning into an income-producing apartment.
By the time I came along and then moved in, there was a long-term tenant living in the apartment, and we continued to have long-term tenants up until mid-2023.
As our life together grew, Mr. Dink and I slowly realized we didn’t love having long-term tenants in the space. There were many reasons for this. For starters, the space is part of our house, and we didn’t love how close in proximity we were to our tenant. We craved more privacy. We also didn’t like that we didn’t have more control over the space. Who knew what a long-term tenant was doing in there? It was part of our house, and yet it wasn’t our space. In addition, we started having friends and family coming to stay on the regular, and we were feeling like it was cramped/tight quarters in our side of the house when these visits occurred.
For those reasons and more, when our long-term tenant moved out in mid-2023, we decided to try out the idea of turning the space into a fully furnished, short-term rental, and we decided to experiment with Airbnb hosting.
We spent the summer of 2023 getting the space fixed up, furnished, and ready to list, and in September 2023, we officially went live!
Today on the blog, I’m sharing more about why, after 1.5 years of hosting, we’re considering this experiment a total success.
In short, we have been super happy with this decision to list our apartment on Airbnb. We love having our space back and having more control over it. It feels like part of our home again, and we enjoy being able to share it with more people as well as being stewards of our wonderful community, all in a way that works for us.
Read on for some additional highlights and learnings.
We actually enjoy having visitors (both strangers AND friends/fam)
For starters, we have actually enjoyed meeting some of the folks who come and stay. We honestly weren’t sure how we’d feel about having people coming and going from our home, most of whom we did not know, but this was a nice surprise benefit for us of the Airbnb experience. We don’t interact with everyone (we err on the side of not introducing ourselves in-person in order to give folks privacy, and we take the lead from our guests). But those who do seek us out or who we come across in the driveway, we have loved meeting. Highlights include a couple who were originally from the area and loved to come back and visit and wanted to tell us every adventure they went on, and another family with a bunch of kids who absolutely adored getting to witness Mr. Dink making maple syrup in our driveway last spring. We’ve even had some repeat visitors, which is always nice, especially for the stress levels! One repeat visitor comes to the area for work, and she just booked her 4th stay with us.
On the flip side, if for some reason we have guests who are not friendly and/or rude, they’re gone in the blink of an eye! We have a 2-night minimum and we don’t allow stays of longer than 1 week, so guests are typically gone before we know it. However, in reality, this situation is SUPER rare and has never been a real problem, perhaps just a slight nuisance 🙂
Secondly, and perhaps not unsurprisingly, we have immensely enjoyed having friends and family come to stay, much more than we did when the apartment was occupied by a long-term tenant and guests had to stay in our guest room.
Before embarking on our Airbnb hosting journey, having guests over was a little bit stressful. We felt like we were all on top of each other, getting in each other’s way. Our upstairs is very small, with the 2 bedrooms very close to one another and a small bathroom in between. It was overall fine and did the trick in a pinch, but stays of longer than a night or 2 started to drive me (and everyone) a little nuts.
Now, I feel SO much relief when we have guests over. Now, with the rare exception, we just block off the Airbnb and have any guests stay in the apartment. Everyone seems to love having a little bit more privacy, and we have an open-door, no-knock policy to our side so that guests feel more like it’s just another room in the house (even though you have to walk a short distance outside). Do we wish it was somehow connected inside? Sure, but it matters more to us that our Airbnb guests feel like they have total privacy (sorry friends and family).
Some of the highlights in this regard are that I love having my mom come and stay more than ever, and she comes for even longer now because we don’t feel like we’re in each other’s space. Everyone is happier and saner! Also, my stepmom can’t do stairs, so she and my dad could never really come and stay with us before. Because the apartment is on the first level with just one step to enter, she and my dad can come and visit now, and they love the space. In fact, we just hosted them for 3 nights over the holidays. We had a blast! We also had Mr. Dink’s childhood friend who now lives in Africa come and stay in the apartment with her husband and 4 kids. We would NEVER have been able to host them all in our side of the house, and it was a highlight of the year to be able to spend so much quality time with them and have them stay right next door.
Mr. Dink and I actually enjoy working and running this experiment together
As a business owner himself, Mr. Dink has been great about encouraging us to think of this as a side business we are running together. We don’t just “set it and forget it” when it comes to the Airbnb. We are constantly discussing what we want, what we’ve learned, and how we can improve.
We also divvy up the work so that we both feel like we are contributing and so that we know our roles and exactly what to expect. We constantly evaluate how it’s going, and we ask for help when we need it. For example, I do all the laundry and communication/online management, and Mr. Dink does the cleaning. I’ll also usually come in and do a last-minute check for things like making sure the newspaper we provide is switched out, checking that none of Mr. Dink’s cleaning supplies got left out and that everything is in order, and vacuuming up any last-minute dead bugs in the windowsill (we live in the country, after all). But for example, if I’m away on a weekend with limited cell service, I know I can ask Mr. Dink to help with any necessary guest responses via the app, and when we have a tight turnaround or Mr. Dink is under a stressful work deadline, he knows he can ask me to help with the cleaning. Because we are a team.
Mr. Dink and I have learned that we really enjoy working/sharing a business together. Although he has much more experience than I do, he also loves what I bring to the table. We were just talking the other day about how we probably would never want to do this without the other person. We’re each playing to our strengths. Now that we’ve seen what it’s like 1 year in, I wouldn’t want to have to do the full turnover by myself. It’s too much work for the reward, in my opinion. And Mr. Dink wouldn’t want to do it if he had to do the communication aspect. He loves knowing that I’ll take care of the random questions and annoyances we sometimes get from our guests, and that I don’t mind it at all. It’s been quite the journey working as a team in this way, and it makes us even more excited for our future together.
And speaking of our teamwork, another huge plus has been that…
We can make our Airbnb experience exactly how we want it
We’re in control, and we set the rules and regulations. We decide to be completely transparent. We don’t hide anything. What you see is what you get with our space. We try to make it really clear that if you book, you’re coming to our house. We live here too, and we will likely be home when you’re here. So if that’s not what you want, don’t book. We also decided when we set it up to make people request to book rather than allowing automatic booking, and we’ve loved it so much we haven’t changed it yet. (We heard from several folks that you get more bookings if you use auto-booking. Not only have we found that not to be the case, in fact we get plenty of bookings, but we also don’t care about making as much money as possible, so this wasn’t as big of a deal to us). What we’ve especially loved is that by requiring guests to request a booking, people have to write us a message, and we get a small window into who’s coming to our house and why. We can also vet for whether people have pets (and whether they’ve included our pet fee in the booking) and if it’s the right type of pet (we once decided to decline someone who said they wanted to bring 2 cats; we say we allow dogs only).
We also love the control we have over other hosting aspects. For example, we can change the price for slow or busy times of year, the cleaning fee, the check-in/check-out times, etc. We can block off the calendar when we have guests staying or for other reasons, like if we’re traveling for an extended period of time. If we have a busy life period and/or are feeling a little burnt out, we can just block it off for awhile and take a break. We also do this when we go on vacation, to give us a little bit of a break around when we leave and come home. It’s glorious. We’re actually just coming off of our biggest break. We decided to block off the entire month of December to be able to host family around the holidays, without the pressure of having had to plan everything ahead of time so that we could work around the Airbnb schedule. Again, glorious, and totally worth the “lost” income (we don’t count on Airbnb income for any of our regular expenses).
We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the demand
We weren’t sure what the demand would be like in a small, rural college town in Vermont. We figured we’d be booked for big college events and leaf-peeper season. But we’ve found that we’re actually in a pretty desirable place year-round. Because of that, we have made much more money than we expected, all while keeping our prices at or below the average for the area.
Between college parents, skiers and winter adventurists, and tourists looking to come to Vermont, we seem to be in a highly desired area. I shared in the initial blog post that we weren’t making as much with the Airbnb as we were with a long-term tenant. But that all changed after the first few months…perhaps getting superhost status and a few good reviews under our belt helped too?
After the first few months, even though we were charging slightly under the average for our area, we found that we were making more money per month on average than we used to make with long-term tenants, without the place being booked solid (aka, stress) AND with being able to have our friends and family come visit whenever we wanted.
So far, it just feels like an all-around win-win situation. We’ll keep going with it as long as we can and while we’re still enjoying it!
So, to sum this update up…
The pros have far outweighed the cons
Sure, we get the occasional strange or needy guest, but we have never had a completely bad experience (knock on wood) that has made us question shutting down. Usually, the worst case scenario is that we (meaning I, because I’m in charge of communication) have to put in a little more effort than usual. But the best part of this con? The guests are always going to be gone soon, usually in about 2 nights.
I also think it’s worth mentioning that the Airbnb experience from a business perspective has been great. So far, Airbnb has been a wonderful partner. Sure, they take a cut of the profits, but we’re actually very happy with this given how much we love the peace that that cut affords, especially compared with our long-term tenant experience. Could we be making more money? Of course, but you can argue that you can ALWAYS make more money. We’re happy, and we love that Airbnb takes care of all the money aspects. We get a LOT of requests for going off-app regarding payment, which we never do (we would entertain it for a repeat guest or someone we trusted), and which Airbnb discourages (of course they do, because they want the money – but, they are also worried about safety issues, which is apparent and appreciated). Especially as the communicator (and also the one who stresses/worries a lot more), having Airbnb as a partner really helps ME with my peace of mind.
Want to give it a try?
To conclude, I’ll leave you with some of my thoughts and tidbits if you’re interested in hosting your own Airbnb (with a space at your primary residence, where you live). If this doesn’t interest you, feel free to scroll to the end.
Get comfortable and let go: aka, don’t sweat the small stuff! In the beginning, I worried about literally everything (if this is you, I hope you feel seen. If this isn’t you, please share your tips). The truth is, every guest is completely different, and there’s really NO predictability, so just be willing to adapt as you go and answer questions on the fly. Trust me, you’ll be able to figure ANYTHING out. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you can relax.
Be honest and transparent about your space: in my opinion, there’s no point in trying to “sell it,” meaning talking it up to something it’s not. You’re just asking for people to set their expectations too high, and these are the ones that will leave bad reviews. If you mislead people on your listing, you’re only hurting yourself. We’ve found that when people know what to expect, things go better.
You may make more money than you think: we’ve even kept our prices cheaper than the surrounding units, and we’re still making considerably more than we did with a long-term tenant. AND we’re getting the added bonus of being able to have friends/family come and stay, which may be a nonmonetary benefit but for us, feels like a huge win.
Divide and conquer: if you can divvy up the labor, even just a little bit, it really helps. I am SO grateful that Mr. Dink does the cleaning, and he’s so grateful I take care of the communication (which he hates). He feels a lot better when he runs into a guest in the driveway and has to have small talk for 10 minutes knowing that he didn’t have to do all the communication leading up to it.
Be consistent: decide how you want to host, and then stick with it (also reevaluate as needed and adjust). For example, we have a pretty hands-off approach once people have booked, because we have all the details laid out on the app, and we specifically say to reach out or knock on our door with any questions. I send one message through the app the day before guests check-in, asking if they have any questions and wishing them safe travels, and then I give them their space. From there, communication is up to them. Some find this weird, and others love it. You’ll never be able to please everyone, so please yourself first. You can always pivot based on the guest.
Always respond to requests/inquiries: even when you don’t want to. People seem to find this super courteous, even if it’s something they’re not happy with. We had one woman messaging us at 9:30 at night telling us how disappointed she was that she wasn’t finding the water “hot enough for her to take a bath.” For starters, we were shocked that anyone was taking a bath in the apartment, so we noted that. But we also responded to each of her messages saying how sorry we were (but at the time, this was not an emergency, and there was really nothing we could do, especially at 9:30 at night). We thought for sure she would leave us a bad review, especially considering how “disappointed” she kept saying she was. But in the end, she left a glowing review and absolutely raved about the place. I was shocked, but I attribute it to the fact that we were responsive, apologetic, and we didn’t dismiss her disappointment. Mr. Dink and I had personally stayed at an Airbnb once where we couldn’t get in and the owner just never responded, and it left a horrible taste in my mouth. So I make it a personal goal to respond (kindly) to every message we receive, even if I’m rolling my eyes at the same time.
Ok friends, I feel like I could go on and on forever, but I’m going to end this here! Let me know what questions you have – I’d be happy to speak to anything further in the comments or by email! You can reach me personally at [email protected].
P.S. Curious about experimentation, and looking for more experiment stories? You can find them all compiled and in one place here.