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https://www.airbnb.com/d/omgfund
I like this idea and will be interested to see what comes of it.
I notice the host, Kristie, who is on the panel to judge ideas averages 4.85 on her ratings across 4 properties. When you have a unique property it’s harder to “underpromise and overdeliver.”
wow. 1 night to stay in her Hobbit House is $858 AUD, i’m surprised she has even 4.5* for value. It looks awesome, kudos to her for building this and getting LOTR fans to part with their money.
The potato house is $550aud for one night. she’s pretty much fully booked.
Estimated revenue9651 AUD/month, based on next 90 days
Occupancy rate89% for next 90 days
Average daily rate**$337** for next 90 days
pretty easy turnover, and she does overnight stays too, there’s def a market for this stuff.
It’s nice to see Airbnb also support hosts whose Airbnb’s don’t look like an IKEA or West Elm showroom.
I have just applied!!! I hope to build on another section of our acre. A shaded outdoor kitchen, huge patio, with enclosed Br, Ba, Lv and little infinity pool!!! need $$$!
btw I have not found it difficult to overdeliver, even with the best photos everyone is just stunned. I also think, when booking an unusual place, guests are predisposed to love it, have really checked it all out etc, or they wouldn’t book.
aw fff now to get my hub on board 
I wish I was up to doing it, I would love to run a unique or unusual space. But I don’t think we’re staying put for much longer so it doesn’t make sense to bother with it.
But I really love the OMG search filter. They could get rid of all but the OMG, it’s the only one that makes sense. There were already filters for lakes, beaches, pools, views, shared homes and also treehouses, yurts, tiny homes, farm stay, pretty much all of it. They could put the castles, high design, caves, islands, etc in the OMG filter.
I’ve enjoyed looking the OMG by switching to the map view and being inspired to plan a road trip around them. A covered wagon one night, a train car the next and so on. (TN has so many odd ones that I wonder if they even have building permits, lol.)
It’s not quite as pricey in USD but still a lot for something without a pool (my personal boundary for that price).
But I was really pleased to see that there was a ton of inexpensive omg listings, a little more than a third of the ones I’m shown when I choose the filter were under a $100.
And there a lot of private rooms too so homeshare hosts should get in on this. Some were private rooms in some kind of omg house but plenty were only special in the private room (some merely themes).
If anyone wants to get in on the apparently booming hobbit house market, I came across this house a couple of weeks ago perusing Zillow. It has a guest house that is hobbit-ready.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/616-Lois-St-Kerrville-TX-78028/87393302_zpid/
I have more of a sense of dread now than I did for y2k, 9/11, bubble/crash of 2008 or the pandemic. No way I’m investing in niche rentals.
We’re thinking of coming back down in that general direction so I’ve been looking around. I’ll admit that when I saw that house I thought, well there’s instant Airbnb if we wanted one still. Maybe the OMG fund will buy it for someone. It’s a good price if it wasn’t going to cost a gazillion dollars to finance it.
My good friend in New Zealand has taken a job in San Marcos. So, after a bit of a hiatus from spending much time in Central TX it’s looks like I’ll become re-acquainted with it.
That’s sort of my second hometown after Austin, I went to high school and a few years of university there. I’d love to go back to San Marcos, I still have people there, including my best friend.
Though it seems so crowded now, suffocated by being too popular, like Austin, which is why I’m still exiled in New England. But then again, there are good reasons that my current city isn’t as popular and I’m tired of them, lol.
Yeah, my friend went to A&M for Master’s and PhD and lived most of the 90’s in College Station. But the region has changed a lot and it will be interesting to see how she adapts. She’s the kind who isn’t really happy anywhere so I guess it doesn’t matter.
It would be so hard to not be happy in that river, maybe it’ll have a positive effect on her.
isn’t it tricky to plan a road trip around them, cos you need to input dates to even see places. you’d have to plan months in advance, and even then you could miss something if your dates are unlucky
This to me is the downfall of search. you can’t just see everything that’s in a local area. My dates are flexible (but NOT in a “week, weekend or month” way).
it’s a lot for something with a queen sized bed… we are designing 2 new couples only spaces, not quite OMG level but def going to be themed and hopefully WOW. Def will have a king bed.
yes I applied too. We have an old concrete round water tank on our farm that we’ve dreamed about turning into accomm, I think it fits the OMG category quite well.
We have double size beds. They have high quality linens and goose down duvets. No one has ever commented on the bed size. We have had some tall couples too!
Good luck with your contest winning and new constructions! I have known a few water tank homes! I love round homes.
It was was a fun exercise to apply<><>… dreaming… I also have another 750 sq ft adu designed… our house, trailer zone, outdoor pavillion and adu each on their own private area of our million dollar view acre. Somehow with the giant rocks and elevations, it will be someday great!
Recent guest photo
I’m using the zoom to limit the length of the drive and doing an 8-day date span with the +/- 7 days option to get the most places to pop up as a workaround. But, absolutely tricky if you had a specific destination of course.
I totally agree. To me, it’s the worst thing they’ve ever done, even worse than the debacle with the pet-friendly filter. It’s so over-the-top dumb, even for Airbnb.
As a guest, I don’t notice the bed size but I think a lot of guests do and that bed size is something underestimated by some hosts. If you have one of the only kings in the area, that’s a great spot to be in. On the flip side, if there are a lot of kings in the area, then you have to at least have a queen.
Unless it’s not going to matter, like because it’s Tiki : )
That sounds really cool and perfect for OMG. I’m rooting for you!!
This was the case even before this latest mess. For example, there’s an Airbnb I stayed at in PHX in 2018. I’ve searched PHX several times since then and it doesn’t show up unless I zoom way in. Sometimes even when pretty well zoomed in. For years you can watch listings pop up and disappear as you move around on the map.
Part of the problem is that there are so many listings in cities now that there’s no way to show them all at one time. And for rural areas they start out so zoomed out that you can be quite far from where you want to go. And if you don’t know where you want to go you are completely at the mercy of Airbnb’s latest search whim.
So true and exactly why I know how to use the +/- 1, 2, 3 or 7 days options. In many places it doesn’t pay to browse and then check calendars, in some it does, but not in all. I think fewer places than even a couple of years ago.
But there’s something about it being a full week that it reverts to that doesn’t make any sense to me. One of the best things that airbnb did was expand options to not have to stay 7 days when renting a vacation home because that is the tradition in many areas. Before airbnb was widely available, it was really difficult to rent a place of our own for less than a week when we had to go to the Cape to see my in-laws, everything was a Sat-Sat kind of thing.
It works in my favor that I’m looking for a specific date 99+% of the time. I also am looking for a specific town and usually a specific neighborhood. If I have to do something like drive across country and don’t know when and where I’ll stop I’ll just do hotels. Airbnb is way too hard to use for that, imo.
I’d love to eventually just say “hey, I just want to find a super cool place to go and I don’t care when I go or how long I stay.” Then maybe the new Airbnb will work great.
Will that be before or after you get gifted with a brand new Porsche? 
Definitely before. I’m mentally working on getting to that point even though I’m far from reality. I was doing well on the plan to cut back on dog boarding but now between the stock market being down, inflation and looming recession I realize it’s bad timing. I need to keep making money while I’m physically able to do so.
