Normal letting or AirBNB?

My flat is without beds, a table and a remote-controllable lock.
I am living 600km away from the flat.

I am deciding between AirBNB and normal letting.

My pros for AirBNB:

  1. I can earn more
  2. I can throw out badly behaving guests easily

My cons against AirBNB:

  1. I could have no income for quite some time, especially, if the flat is badly rated.
  2. Flats have already been used for porn sets and AirBNB’s rating didn’t change anything about that
  3. I have to buy and install a new lock. Still people have to enter the main door, which is again locked and people refuse currently to have a pin-lock there.
  4. I am highly dependent on good ratings
  5. I need to install Wifi and everything else that makes it comfortable for a guest.
  6. AirBNB claims to pay up to 800.000€ for damages but reading forums, they don’t pay anything most of the time.
  7. AirBNB fees
  8. Having high fluctuation, the likelyhood of having guests destroying the property becomes higher

Pro independent letting:

  1. I don’t have to care for the flat for quite some time
  2. I don’t need to install accessories
  3. Nobody rates me on the internet

Contra independent letting:

  1. I constantly earn less than - provided it works - it is being let with airbnb
  2. If something happens to my flat, I have to find contractors for the first time. With airbnb, I would already have easily available contractors because the demand is there from the get-go and constantly.

What pros and cons can you add?

LTR is more consistent with less vacant periods and you can build a relationship of trust with your tenant. The amount of repairs for plumbing etc. would be fewer and you’d have happier neighbours. I’d plump for that.

An important consideration that you’ve not mentioned is the likelihood/ease of getting short term vs long term bookings respectively. This isn’t a given, and is quite location dependent. And people who are doing short term vs long term may be looking for somewhat different things. Do you have any sense of how your location would fare?

Having said that, remote Airbnbing is generally considered problematic unless you have people locally, preferably a co-host. But I’ve never tried doing this, so have no idea.

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I’m in the same situation except I recruit trusted people to host remotely. I’m inexperienced with remote hosting but I say the extra money from airbnb is like a part time gig. If u rent out long term and get a part time job, you’ll probably end up in a financially stronger situation than airbnb, which imo will eventually get to a point when it’s no longer profitable. There are zero barriers to entry, and anyone can choose to host. Those who are content to earn a few quick bucks will undercut those who depend on reasonable prices to pay the mortgage. I had to cut out my management company bevause I was bleeding money paying them 20%. The margins have gotten thinner each year where I am.

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Interesting comment. You might be right. Airbnb clearly could not care less whether hosts make a sustainable income.

I’ve been booked all summer with Airbnb guests and the earnings have been really good. However, after considering everything I purchased to make the space more comfy, I’m breaking even. If I were you, I would lease the apartment instead of Airbnb.

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Ritz3 are you a remote host? If so, how do you do it?

No, I’m not remote. I live an hour away.

Remote host is hard. We have gone through a number of manager/cleaners- the current one is great but has to stop due to moving away. So we are looking again.
We have done everything we can to make it easy- we use a linen service, and we pay well above the average to get someone good.

For us because we want to use the house for holidays it’s worth it- we would probably make more from a traditional lease but then you can’t use it yourself…

Cheers,

Simon