This has been a common issue and question from new real estate investors and long-term Airbnb hosts.
This is just to share my 2 cents on the pros and cons of doing both and let you decide from there.
It’s less of a headache, you don’t have to worry about reviews, making an impression on someone’s travels, meeting, and greeting, and the whole shebang.
Repairs, depending on the arrangement, you may not need to run around buying items or replacing them yourself. Your tenant can take over the responsibility of handling minor repairs and they deduct the expense from the next rent (this I’ve done a lot).
You don’t have to be glued to your phone at 3 am responding to inquiries, in this part of the world where I’m currently in, older folks don’t want to do that and neither do the agents/property managers.
It’s passive, you really don’t have to do much.
CONS
You risk leaving money on the table and excluding yourself from the short term rental community.
SHORT TERM RENTAL
You can make 2X - 3X the normal price (at least where I am and the kind of apartments I handle) some places can be more.
You’re part of a disruptive community, people come up with ideas and strategies that can help you grow your business.
You’re building a profile for yourself - when I first started about a year ago, my reasons for listing on Airbnb were mainly survival and letting the place pay for itself, I later realised this is a kind of resume I’m building here, I’ve got a profile with listings and reviews old and new. A practical example was during the betoken ICO’s whitelist stages, Airbnb hosts were given 2X the contribution allocation limits, which I passed on but none the less if I were interested it would have been possible because of my affiliation with Airbnb as a host.
You meet different personalities from around the world, make connections, learn so much about the world and you never know what might come out of those relationships, the possibilities are endless.
CONS
No room for laziness with Airbnb and short-term rental as a whole, in my experience your cleaners can’t be trusted 100% to do a good job at least not up to my standards, so you need to be hands-on with them, at some point you might have to just hustle it down and clean yourself depending on how many places or how big a house you have listed.
It’s an all around the clock type gig, guests are trying to book from different time zones so sometimes, you’ll have to sacrifice your sleep.
Dealing with crazies, there are just some personalities that you can’t really please you’ll be frustrated trying to, if you don’t have the skills to deal with such types, it might hurt your review at the end.
Risk of no bookings, perhaps due to peak or low season, pricing, or lack of effort on your side to stay relevant etc. If you’re someone who doesn’t want to pay out of pocket for expenses, you’re practically toast.
When people around you underprice themselves because their listings are new or for whatever reason, my intuition is, it’ll convince the algorithm to suggest a price you might not be happy with.
In a nutshell, long-term rental is way easier at least in my opinion to run, fewer emotions to deal with, it’s laid back, the income is there regardless but it’s capped at whatever is stipulated in your contract.
Listing on Airbnb or other platforms like it is tedious, it’s a business so stakes are high, less sleep, it's emotionally tasking, and you have to be constantly learning but with high yield potential.
The question is, which can you stomach?
Credit: Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash