Renting spare room on Airbnb when I have a housemate?

clearancer

My friend went down the air bnb route. She loves having people to stay and lives in a seaside town. She gave up after negative feedback about cleanliness. Guests expected immaculately clean shared areas. She was spending so much time cleaning that the extra income wasn't worth it. 

Niv

delmonta said:

Niv said:

Airbnb in this scenario is not simply giving someone a place to sleep for the night, you are letting a room in an occupied house - you will be obliged to host and if you are away you are obliging your friend to host. You are a slave to your ratings so if your friend doesn't want to be involved but is the only one there your ratings could seriously suffer which may put strain on your friendship if you feel its was in any way due to his attitude etc

Some visitors do want to chat / be told about places to visit in the area so will seek you / your friend out.

Some visitors can be vey picky with certain things and not even tell you, you only find out when you get a review and a poor rating.

People are very picky on cleanliness and often will reflect it in their ratings and not say anything to you at the time. A shared house is much harder to keep clean and tidy, especially shared areas such as the bathroom etc, is your friend prepared to clean and dry it after every time he uses it so its 'guest ready'?

If you are putting your friend through this I think you must share the income from him tbh, not just think about it. You want him to buy into this otherwise it will fail, too many bad ratings and 1, people are less likely to come and 2, you get suspended from the platform anyway.

On breakfast - no, you do not have to offer breakfast, in the settings you select if breakfast is included or not. If you do decide to offer breakfast you can define what sort of breakfast (i.e. you can offer 'continental' so not a cooked breakfast etc). In the middle of Bristol this is not such a big deal so maybe start by not offering and see how it goes.

Thanks yeah all good points. I've not rented on airbnb before so I'm new to it all

It does sound like this won't really work unless I am here, in which case I think it would be ok. I actually quite like the idea of meeting new people and hosting them, and if it gets too much we can always stop. But you're right about cleaning etc, and reviews

When you say share the income, do you mean split it 50/50?

I just have so many outgoings with the house and maintenence, have been renovating it to a high standard since the start of covid, everything inside I bought. So somehow splitting it 50/50 feels a bit odd to me, but maybe it makes sense

Regarding the split bit, no I wouldn't give your lodger 50%, but something for the inconvenience, as I starting point I would  think around 33% you, 33% 'the house' (to cover any repairs etc) and 33% lodger. But maybe even that is too generous, 20% maybe, so if you charge £50 a night he gets a tenner. But depends how much you expect him to do, if he is doing extra cleaning and tidying and hosting you should play fair which edges me back to the 33% thought.

Niv

clearancer said:

My friend went down the air bnb route. She loves having people to stay and lives in a seaside town. She gave up after negative feedback about cleanliness. Guests expected immaculately clean shared areas. She was spending so much time cleaning that the extra income wasn't worth it. 

This feeds into my previous comment on reliant on reviews. It can be so disheartening to get downrated after to your face they say how great their stay was etc. 

We spend more time cleaning our air bnb space than we do the rest of the house (the rest of the house is probably 5 or 6 times bigger...). We are now trying to move away from the one or two night stays because its just so onerous on cleaning when we both have full time jobs.

Sometimes I think people watch four in a bed a bit too much which makes them very picky.

delmonta

Ok I feel like you've all pretty much convinced me to not go the airbnb route! So the hunt begins for a medium/long term lodger I think. 

thanks again

Niv

delmonta said:

Ok I feel like you've all pretty much convinced me to not go the airbnb route! So the hunt begins for a medium/long term lodger I think. 

thanks again

It wasn't my aim to put you off, merely to point out some of the pitfalls. I would say its not 'easy money' but it can be a decent amount of money and once you get into your groove it can be worthwhile albeit that it feels sometimes like you are basically paying yourself for cleaning your own home

delmonta

Niv said:

delmonta said:

Ok I feel like you've all pretty much convinced me to not go the airbnb route! So the hunt begins for a medium/long term lodger I think. 

thanks again

It wasn't my aim to put you off, merely to point out some of the pitfalls. I would say its not 'easy money' but it can be a decent amount of money and once you get into your groove it can be worthwhile albeit that it feels sometimes like you are basically paying yourself for cleaning your own home

yeah it makes sense, and because I havent done it I didn't really think it through enough!