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This past year, I've gotten really interested in financial podcasts and blogs. In many of them, I noticed a common thread: "house hacking." The basic principle is to buy a house, live in a portion of it, then rent out the rest, so the rent covers your mortgage. Housing is usually one of your biggest expenses, so doing this is huge...you're essentially living for free! The most common example is a duplex or a house with an additional dwelling unit (a room above the garage, a mother-in-law suite in the basement, or even an RV parked in your driveway). We don't have any of those, but we were still intrigued by the idea. So we brainstormed what we could do to house hack. The kicker is that we have young kids, and we didn't want to do anything that would disrupt their lives too much or put their safety at risk. The ideas we tossed around included renting our guest bedroom to a college student, selling our house and buying a duplex instead, or putting the entire house on Airbnb and leaving when it gets rented. The last idea is exactly what we decided to do! Since March, we've rented our personal home on Airbnb six times, and just by vacating our house for a couple weekends each month, we've covered our mortgage. Now that we've done it a few times, I thought I'd share our experience with renting our personal home on Airbnb. I'll be honest, it's QUITE a lot of work to get the house ready, especially the first time. But it's gotten easier with each booking, and it's something we can do together in the evening once our kids are in bed. The money's pretty good, so the effort is worth it to us! If you've ever considered putting your own house on Airbnb, I went through a bunch of the concerns we had and how we decided to address them. I hope this is helpful or interesting! And if you decide to try out hosting on Airbnb, feel free to sign up through my referral link. :D
1. Will anyone actually want to rent our house?
Our house is in a residential neighborhood in the suburbs of a midsize city that's not exactly a tourist destination. But we've worked hard to make it cute, and I was confident we could get at least some interest. I figured that the type of people likely to rent this house would be similar to us: young families looking for more space and style than a typical hotel room offers. So we leaned into that. Instead of trying to make our house appeal to anyone & everyone, we catered our listing to appeal to young families. We took pictures with the crib and the high chair, and mentioned that we have baby gear guests could borrow while staying here (a travel stroller, a baby rocker, etc.). We bought a king size bed for Ian's room so we could fit multiple couples, and put two twin beds in Emmett's room for older kids. I styled all the rooms and took good quality photos with my big camera (not just a phone). And guess what? It worked! Most of our bookings have been young families. Several of them had grandparents that came to help with the kids. They have mentioned that it's great to find a place with two king beds, and a crib so they don't have to bring a pack 'n play. So far, we've mostly had people come for college graduations, weddings, or because they were passing through Spokane on a road trip.
2. Are we going to have to spend a ton of money to get ready?
Obviously the whole point of doing this is to save money, so we didn't want to spend too much on getting our house Airbnb-ready. That would defeat the purpose! I could have easily spent 5x more, getting the thickest towels, the highest threadcount sheets, the fanciest toiletries, the cutest dishes. I could have set out an elaborate gift basket in hopes of getting good reviews. But I tried to remember that you can only get 5 stars, so there's no point in trying to give a 10-star experience...you know what I mean? It would have been fun to buy fresh flowers and popcorn and chocolate and fruit and wine...but that would literally be eating into our profit. Instead, we set out a small bag of coffee and some chocolate. Under $10, and still feels like a thoughtful gift.
As for bedding, towels, dishes, and toiletries, I still bought nice looking stuff...but I looked for options that were inexpensive. We got bright white towels because they can be bleached, and navy washcloths because I heard white washcloths will get stained from people removing makeup. I got simple white coupe plates from Walmart, silky soft sheets from Amazon, shampoos and hand soaps that were on sale, and bulk paper towels and toilet paper from Costco. We did buy some other things to get ourselves ready for the first stay: waterproof mattress covers for every bed, a binder for house rules and local suggestions, a keypad entry for the front door, and locks for the spaces we wanted to keep private...but our first booking pretty much covered all the initial expenses, and the recurring costs like sponges and toilet paper are covered by our cleaning fee. Plus, all the things we bought are things that are nice for us to have, too!
3. Will we actually earn enough to make it worth it?
I did some competitive research to see what similar-sized Airbnbs in our area are going for, and how full their calendars are. Since this is our personal home and we're doing the cleaning ourselves, we actually don't want our place to be booked constantly, so we decided to charge slightly higher than the average. We've remodeled two bathrooms recently and have put a lot of effort into decorating, so I figured we'd still get interest even with a higher rate (and I was right). We decided that two bookings per month seemed doable, so we aimed for that. The hardest part is actually cleaning and vacating our house, so we made the minimum stay two nights to make it worth our time. With the goal to cover our mortgage, we priced our house so that two bookings + cleaning fees = our mortgage. Once we hit that goal each month, we block out our calendar for the rest of the month so we don't get overbooked & burned out. We still want to enjoy some weekends at home, after all! Luckily, we've gotten some long weekends in the mix, which is even better--after all, cleaning is the same amount of effort whether our guests stay two nights or four.
So far, we have hit or exceeded our goal almost every month, and the more experience we get, the easier it is to get our house ready. Paying our mortgage in two weekends, simply by leaving the house and staying with family or friends? I'd say that's pretty worthwhile!
4. Where will we go when our house is rented?
I fully admit, having our house rented makes it pretty tempting to justify taking a trip of our own. But if we do that every time, we won't actually be saving anything significant. Luckily, both sets of our parents live here in Washington state, so that helps a lot. My parents' house is only a 5 minute drive from ours, so that's where we've gone most of the time. We also used a long weekend to go visit Ben's parents in the Seattle area. It's a trip we would have taken sometime anyways, so having a booking just gave us the extra motivation to put it on the calendar. We have also stayed with friends and taken them out to dinner as a thank you, and for the times when none of those options work, I also have a bunch of hotel points that I've accumulated from credit card signup bonuses. We may take some fun weekend trips to nearby cities we've been wanting to explore, especially if we get booked for long weekends. Although we'll have to use up some points, we won't have to spend any actual money on hotels--and we'll get paid to go on a little vacation!
5. What if our stuff gets stolen or damaged?
Airbnb has a Host Guarantee that provides up to $1 million of protection in case of damages. I also called our home insurance to let them know we were putting our house on Airbnb. We decided to close off some spaces to guests (our master bedroom, the pantry, and the garage) so that helps a lot with having a place to stash things that we don't want guests getting into. We lock up those spaces and put our personal items in there, like clothes and family albums. But we're still cautious about the possibility of things getting stolen, so anything really valuable or sensitive--things like our passports, social security cards, laptop, and camera--we take with us.
I should also mention, so far our house has been very clean when we come home and no one has trashed it at all. Literally, the worst we've had was some makeup spilled on the bathroom floor. Everyone has treated our house with respect, left it sparkling clean, and one guest even left us some unopened bottles of Perrier and wine that they didn't drink. We felt bad, they left us a nicer gift than we did for them! Haha.
6. What if something creepy happens here?
Ben saw some horror stories of criminal and downright disturbing things happening at Airbnbs. That's a legitimate concern, and we can't 100% protect against it. But I figured that anyone with gross intentions would probably be looking for a cheap place. So I purposefully priced our house high enough that hopefully it won't appeal to those type of people. We also turned off Instant Book and set it so that we have to manually approve all bookings. That gives us the ability to vet people by looking up their reviews and their social media profiles, and having conversations with them first before accepting the booking. I like to ask why they're coming to Spokane, and then we can verify the reason they give us or feel it out to see if they seem legit (is there actually a basketball tournament or graduation that weekend? etc.). We had one person that we rejected because we didn't feel comfortable...he had no photo, no reviews, and gave us no information about why he was coming to Spokane, even after I messaged him and asked. We figured it's better to be safe and trust our gut, even if we miss out on a little money. So far, I have felt totally comfortable with every guest who has stayed here...and every one has treated our house well and been very responsive and communicative.
7. How do we prevent people from going through our personal stuff?
As I mentioned, we put locks on our garage, pantry, and master bedroom, and labeled those rooms private. The week before, we go through every closet, dresser, and storage space and put anything personal into bins that we can scoot into those private rooms. That includes our coats and shoes, our kids clothes, special toys, photo albums, and sentimental items. We even covered our family photos in the gallery wall with art. That might have been a little over-the-top, but it helped Ben feel comfortable--and hopefully it made our guests feel like they had the house to themselves and weren't intruding.
8. What will we do with our food?
I think it's kind of gross to go to an Airbnb and have someone else's food in the fridge. So we decided to totally clear out our fridge and freezer, even the condiments. A few months ago, our friends upgraded their fridge and they offered us their old one, specifically for this purpose. They gave it to us for free, but I bet you could also find a basic white fridge on Craigslist for pretty cheap. We have the extra fridge in our garage, and we simply move all our food into it the night before. Then we deep clean our fridge and freezer so they look sparkly clean! For dry goods, we leave out a few basic items that guests can use (salt, pepper, sugar, olive oil, etc.) and lock the rest in the pantry.
9. Isn't it weird to have strangers sleeping in our beds?
Every time we stay at an Airbnb or a hotel, we're sleeping in a bed that someone else has stayed in. I don't think it's inherently gross, as long as the bedding has been washed. But to make it feel a little less weird, we got waterproof mattress covers for every bed, and a separate set of sheets and bedding that we will only use for guests. That also makes it easier on us when we get home...we can instantly strip the beds and make them right away with our own bedding, so we don't have to wait for the laundry to get done before we can go to bed.
10. How are we going to keep the house clean on the day guests arrive?
Our kids are pretty darn cute, but they are also really good at making messes. By the time breakfast is over, the dining room's usually covered in jam, yogurt, oatmeal, eggs--whatever we're eating. And the longer we stay home, the more they're likely to destroy all the efforts we put into cleaning & styling the night before. So I have been leaving the house first thing in the morning, even though check-in isn't until the afternoon. I'll either pack up some breakfast the night before, or we go to my mom's house for breakfast, or we swing by a coffeeshop or McDonald's. It helps that we are locking our master bedroom (and the connected bathroom) so we at least have a place to get ready in the morning without having to keep it perfectly clean and tidy. So far, we have gotten all five star reviews and several guests have specifically mentioned how clean our house is. We're pretty proud of that, considering we have two little boys that somehow manage to get food and fingerprints everywhere!! I read somewhere that the most important thing about cleaning for an Airbnb is to make sure there aren't any hairs left in the bathrooms or the beds, so we are really thorough about checking for hairs (I even go over the bedding with a lint roller, haha). Hopefully that effort pays off!
What else do you have questions about??? I might do another post later with some lessons learned and tips that we've picked up. For now, we have our calendar blocked off because we're about to start on our phase one kitchen remodel (!!!) but we plan to put our house back on Airbnb once it's done. So far, I would say the experience as a whole has been overwhelmingly positive and hosting on Airbnb is a pretty easy way to earn some significant extra cash...without requiring any extra time away from the kids!
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