Finding an airbnb-friendly place, Faster Research Tips?

Pardon if this has been posted before. I did not see it.

Any research tips for finding apartments or properties for rent that are also airbnb friendly?

I mean this from a research perspective, are there faster ways to search for apartments that allow subletting or airbnb?

I say this because I don’t want to have to verbally every potential apartment for this that I intend to live in.

Prefer to hear from experienced hosts.

Don’t think so. Subletting an apartment that you rent is always going to be a negotiation with the owner or management company. If it were easy to research, after all, everyone would do it.

So very true. And in general, most landlords won’t allow any sort of subletting in their leases. It’s good to hear though that you are searching for Airbnb-friendly landlords rather than cheating :slight_smile:

There are some experienced hosts here who have rental properties and have the permission of their landlords but they are few and far between. You’ll find that almost every host here own their properties so this might not be the best place to ask.

This is up to individual landlords. Most are not going to allow it for obvious reasons. You could try putting an ad on Craigslist and being up front about what you are trying to do. Offer to do Airbnb and give them a big return. Offer to pay for insurance and wear and tear. These would be the main concern of landlords I think.

I see someone in Honolulu does that, but she is a licensed real estate agent.

Robert - This type of action will and does give AirBnB a bad name! The ethical approach is to be above board in all our dealings whether it is with landlords, HOAs, city, county or state government.

As a guest in New Orleans, we were asked to tell anyone who might ask what we were doing there that we were “friends” with the host. That’s when we found out the host were concealing their AirBnB from their landlords. I felt VERY uncomfortable staying under those circumstances. Since it was only one night, we did not ask to be rehomed.

As a new host, we comply with zoning regulations, have a business licence, have submitted our paperwork to pay personal property tax on items associated with the business, and had to change insurance companies to remain covered. Not fun but it is what ethical grownups who want to live with integrity do.

Hope you were kidding and I missed the humor :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Yes he is being sarcastic.

I would have mentioned to the host in that New Orleans situation how uncomfortable you felt being a part of their deceit. I would never stay in a place where the host asks for guest “discretion.”

Thanks Kona - knowing what I know now from a host point of view I think we should have left or at least provided Air with info on the host.

The other reason this pushed my buttons is that we are the only one in our area who has applied for (and received) a business license despite 30+ listings. I know this because of the conversations I had with the zoning, licensing, and county officials as we got started. Some were helpful but some were sure we couldn’t do any such thing as an Aibbnb homestay in a residential neighborhood. We don’t want to “spoil” it for others but wanted to make sure we are aboveboard as the local governments become more regulatory.When we got started we also assumed others had become licensed as well since Air collects the hotel/motel tax.

Having a license puts us at a disadvantage to the other listings in several ways - we don’t provide photos of other rooms in our house or our yard due to the Personal Property Tax, we don’t provide a hot breakfast due to the additional hassles of a correct license for cooking for guests, and we don’t provide additional events such as personal guided tours of the unique aspects of our area for an additional charge like we originally planned - again would required a different license and more fees.

Not to mention being dropped by our insurance company and having to find another one.

It was a long uphill process but we have been open now for 8 weeks and have had 9 bookings! I love hosting and will eventually open a second bedroom (sigh - will need a revised license and show proof that our off-street parking is 17’ wide. Just barely but will be when we trim the grass back off the edges!)

Just as a word of caution…there is a boost for new hosts so you may have had more bookings than should be expected for your location and listing. Don’t assume, if you are, that you will get twice as many bookings when you open another room. Some people don’t want to stay in a boarding house, they want to be the only guest so you may narrow your pool of potential guests. People have posted here that one of their listings gets views and bookings and for some reason the other one doesn’t. Once your new host boost is over you may have to work harder to keep your listing boosted in the search rankings. You can search this forum for threads on how to keep your ranking high.

Good advice. When we started the new host boost meant we were booked solidly for several months - and we didn’t have an ‘introductory’ low price,