Airbnb Update –May 2018

We have now lived in our home for almost ten months. To catch up, here are a few links to past posts about our house story, our airbnb rooms, why you should rent out your rooms, etc.

In these ten months, we have had eight long-term guests (staying two weeks or longer). Our longest housemate has been with us since November 2017. We have had 21 short-term guests. All of the long-term guests have been people around our age and many of them are just in town for a few months for internships. We have hosted guests from India, Indonesia, Brazil, Sweden, Boston, Denver, Seattle and Washington D.C. so far… plus a bunch of people from North Dakota and Wisconsin. One of our very first long-term guests moved back to Denver when her internship was up, and we were able to visit her when we traveled to Denver this spring! It has been a very cool way to meet new people.

We have learned a lot in the last ten months, including how to share space with others and different housemate expectations/rules to have in place, but generally we haven’t needed to enforce them or have difficult conversations with our housemates yet. *knock on wood* I also recently wrote a post all about what to make sure you have in your guest rooms (for airbnb guests but also just for when your friends come to visit!): http://itsmiranda.com/2019/03/28/22-necessities-for-every-airbnb-guest-room/ 

There are all sorts of Airbnb host Facebook pages that Collin and I joined when first starting out. These Facebook pages are helpful in getting advice or asking questions, but over all they are filled with negativity, guest-bashing, and angry hosts. I recently wrote a post in one group, asking for advice on how to write an objective review for a guest that broke a few house rules. Every single comment responding to my post were rude and attacking my hosting style. I’ve since removed myself from those hosting groups that are toxic because they are not worth it and just made me more anxious. There are a few professional, positive ones that I am still a part of & can reach out to for advice.

I am definitely an introvert, so sometimes it is hard to live with others. In those times I need to lock myself in my bedroom and watch Netflix or read a book or take a walk. Our long-term guests also need their own space… we all have demanding jobs so we do not usually interact much during the week. However we do currently have some short-term Airbnb guests that like to talk my ears off as soon as I get home, so I am currently having some introvert-blog-writing-alone-time to myself. It’s a balance.

The part that makes me the most proud is that we have been able to pay $45,000 of our principle off, vs. the $5000 that we would’ve paid off had we been only making minimum payments towards our mortgage. This doesn’t even count the insane amount of money we have saved on interest. We have already knocked our mortgage down by 38 months. (!!) This is mainly due to renting out rooms out, but we have also been working on living cheaply and saving money. However, we are starting to ease back on aggressively paying the mortgage and saving our Airbnb profit for this fall because I am quitting my job to go back to graduate school. While I’m in grad school we are planning on just paying minimum payments or slightly above on our mortgage by using the Airbnb profit and living off of Collin’s income.

There are, of course, many more costs to keep in mind with renting out a home. Our housemates and guests do not pay for water, electricity, gas, heat, A/C, laundry, internet, etc. We just build it into their rent payment. Our utilities can be insanely high some months (especially in winter with our old house) and we realized pretty quickly that we needed a good internet plan to accommodate so many Netflix-users. 😉

Airbnb has been a great way to make friends and use our extra money to put back into the house. It has been great for us, and we are learning how to be better home-owners and landlords. It certainly helps that Collin is handy, because I am not. I’ll write more updates soon.