Renting your primary residence while out of town?

[onemorebike]

The Superbowl is coming to town and one of our neighbors was talking about the $$$ that can be made using Airbnb to rent your house.(also seems.like a great time for no football fans to get out of town). As I started to consider that possibility I wondered if maybe we should try renting our home out via vrbo during the three or four weeks a year we are out of town.

Does anyone here have experience doing this? Any tips, hints or outright warnings?

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[kimmarg]

I have no experience doing this and personally I would not want to unless I was going to be gone for several months. Concerns: What if the renters break your stuff? Will you be sad if your grandmothers ceramic bread bowl sentimental item was used by your roomate renter and then broken? (ask me how I know) Do you keep important documents, cash, jewelery or other high value items in your house? Where would you put them while the renter was there? Would utility costs increase if they run the A/C full blast? Do you clean out all common areas and remove food? provide linen?

Just some things to consider. For me it would not be worth it.

[moonpalace]

We've done this a few times when we've been gone on vacation. Not sure we'll keep doing it, though. It's stressful, even with airbnb insurance, to lock up all your most valuable stuff, make sure your passwords are hidden, etc. It's also stressful, just as you're leaving on vacation, to also have to clean your house! And even having done all that, I've never really loved the idea of someone rooting around in all my personal-but-not-confidential stuff.

I would consider doing it again if we were gone for months at a time, but probably not for just a week.

[apricity22]

Hi Onemorebike,

I have some very close friends who turned their house into a rental before the Super Bowl was in town here a couple of years ago (Phoenix, AZ). I don't know the exact amount but I know they made out pretty well renting their smaller house (~1100 sf would be my guess) for a couple of weeks at nearly $3k I believe. They had already moved somewhere else and turned that residence into an AirBNB so they had most of their personal items out. As far as I know they didn't have any issues around Super Bowl time.

I know they kept it as an AirBNB rental for the next year with mixed results. They have told me it was stressful having to do an inventory of things after every rental (and again they had most of their personal items out of the house). Also, while most people were respectful, others left big messes that cost them more time/money to clean up and could be a problem if they had back to back bookings. They eventually moved the furniture out and turned into a conventional rental with a 1-year lease so they weren't constantly managing new people coming and going, constantly worrying about vacancy, etc.