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“maybe you all rent out rooms in your own homes for fun but I certainly don’t have anywhere close to that type of money”
We rent them to make money, no body is here for fun. If you want make some money then you should listen to some of the advice, it’s doesn’t cost anything to make new pictures from your phone and use some filter. Good luck
My listing is a private room/private bathroom in my home. Guests share my kitchen with me. There is no reason why hosting can’t be both profitable and enjoyable. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive. I tend to get quite interesting guests, many of whom I chat with over coffee or a bottle of wine, have made new friends from all over the world, so that part is fun, but I certainly wouldn’t host for free.
And I can assure you that no host considers cleaning other people’s hair covered in soap scum out of the shower drain to be something they do for fun.
I can also assure you that I haven’t invested a bunch of money. Everything in my guest room are things I already had- the furniture, the lamps, the pictures on the wall. I made the curtains and throw pillows myself.
However, if you are going to host successsfully, newer decent linens and towels are part of that. Charge enough that you can afford to buy and replace those as needed. They don’t have to be expensive at all- I always buy those things on sale.
You asked for a critique, but are being very defensive and resistant to the responses. Honestly, other hosts here are trying to help you- try to receive it as such. Doesn’t mean you have to take everyone’s advice, just try to be open to suggestions. Advice is offered because we want to see fellow hosts succeed.
No you don’t need new furniture, your furniture is lovely. No, you don’t need to hire a professional photographer. No, you don’t need to repaint (when I put the old house I owned and lived in for twenty years on the market, the real estate agent told me to repaint all the walls white. I had used a lot of paint colors- rust, turquoise, yellow, teal, brownish-grey. No way I was repainting. The first people who came to the open house said, " We love the colors!", put in an offer immediately, and bought it).
But you do need to make the beds so they look clean and unslept in before you take photos (one bed has the bottom of the sheet hanging out all messy) and you might need to purchase a few new sheet sets. Antique and full of character isn’t the same thing as shabby-looking.
Take or leave the advice here. You asked for critiques and seem concerned about a downturn in booked nights.
By the way, it would have been fine to post a thread titled “Showing Off My Listing, Any New Host Tips?” if that was what you were looking for.
Airbnb gives new hosts a one month bump. In an area with lots of places this can lead to a sharp drop off after the first month. The good news is it means there are lots of potential guests out there who would book. So have a look at comps and see how they present. Do a search on your area and check out the places at the top and copy what they say and do. Later you can add your own touches.
I think your lovely place looks charming, well presented and clean. If I had any critique it would be of the photo of the “purple bedroom”.The other two bedrooms look so much nicer I would put them first.
well, not necessarily. And also some of us middle aged folks are minimalists too! I can’t stand clutter. However, the OP does also live in this house. I would personally put away trinkets (and by that I mean box them up or just get rid of them forever).
yes, so I just put in a summary of the most important things, but it’s still pretty long. It’s really just to cover you so that if a guest complains about something, part of your response can be “that is disclosed in the listing”, this is esp true if CS gets involved later. I also put an easter egg in my house rules so i’ll know if they read it or not.
you might not want these kind of people! not saying it’s ok to have unsafe housing, but those of us who grew up in the 70s with the unsafe lead paint, somehow have survived, the kind of people who fret about old lead paint are going to find so much more to complain about in a modern home. And this is the kind of thing i put in my house rules, worded in a less frank way than this of course! 
um, that isn’t true. that bed looks unmade, the pillows have been chucked on there with no care. you don’t need to buy new linens, but you can make a bed nicer than that. for a start pull the doona down and tuck it in. and get rid of the mishmash of cushions, there’s alot going on in that space and no one is asking you do white on white on white.
ouch, that hurts deep Sarah.
my whole house is white and greys, and dark grey, except for my Bridgerton room, we really needed that pop of colour! My husband has just painted 2 fireplace collars black, i haven’t seen them irl yet but he swears they look awesome. hmmmmmmm. i’m not embracing the black trend all that much.
lol. but my next studio space will be eclectic boho, I too need to do something different. Although there’s a lot to be said for having similar styles over 3 spaces, so you can share decor, linens and furniture. We have 2 more spaces to complete and they will both share a same theme of natural fibres, textures, wood, white, cream. No grey!
yes this is what we do. the bedding is all new but we have vintage decor pieces and some vintage furniture mixed in with new.
I too have an old stone farmhouse, so trust me, I LOVE older homes, I love mixing modern with vintage. I LOVE your beds so much! I tried so hard to find a king vintage fourposter (no, not a queen, that’s not special/different enough) so i ended up buying a modern one (still found it secondhand on marketplace). You don’t have to spend a fortune to create a stylish space. We buy everything on sale, and I always look for a few quality items to include in each space to offset things that might have been more budget minded, but again: i rarely pay full price.
Here’s what I do know: to be successful in STR moving forward you need to be better and different to your competitors. The old days of staying in someone’s spare room is still around, but other people have pushed the bar up high. Most of us would offer you so much advice for free, you could get a lookbook designed in one day, and then slowly work towards transforming your space.
bingo.
Sorry, @gillian 
. It isn’t that I hate that black and white decor, it’s that I don’t like “trends”, i.e when you pick up decor magazines and there’s a new decor trend every year that so many people try to emulate.
Back in the 40s people painted all the wood trim- it showed that you weren’t poor- you could afford paint. Then a few decades ago, everyone was stripping off the layers of paint to expose the bare wood again. Then I started to see the magazines showing all the wood trim being painted white.
I guess I Iike spaces which are eclectic and unique and sort of grow out of what is available and have some personal history.
haha I’m not offended, i value your often strong and different opinions! And i usually agree with you anyway. Funny about the wood trim though, my mum had a wooden bannister in her duplex which i hated, but she’s of the generation who thinks wood looks posh. i mean it’s stained pine with a varnish! gross. I told her for years to paint it and she was always appalled at the idea. She finally has come round and concedes that painting all that stained pine furniture is not the end of the world.
Trends come and go, I watch a few design channels on youtube and it’s funny to see how obsessed some people are with this stuff. Once you buy a couch, if it was quality, you’re going to have it for (hopefully) decades, so you can’t just buy a new one on a whim. Different for airbnb decor of course, where you can actually do any style you like (I guess different if you are living in it too).
The point isn’t that “styles change,” it’s that we are brainwashed by our corporate sponsors to overconsume. That’s why you rarely see a TV show telling you how to re-use things or emphazising all vintage or antique furniture. It’s about selling you something to make it look vintage or selling something new that looks old. Selling, selling, selling.
preach! no one knows how to repair things either. I was quite impressed with my daughter this week, she went opshopping and found a quality travel bag for her upcoming school trip, the zip had come off and the stitching had come apart in one spot, but the bag otherwise was in mint condition and she got it for $6. she stitched up the bag herself and went to youtube to work out how to put a new slider on the zipper and now it’s functioning again. I can’t believe someone got rid of it instead of just repairing it.
mmmm, this is why TV is dead, because on youtube you will easily find channels that are devoted to re-using, diy, vintage finds and of course, minimalism. and these channels have millions of followers, so there’s an appetite for it.
I’m like a cat, I can’t stand clutter on surfaces. Just like my cats, I can’t resist the urge to push clutter off the surface LOL To me, even if a home is very clean, clutter will make it look messy.
A client of mine with a home full of European antiques just moved to Washington, DC. Several items were damaged in the move. Luckily she was put in touch with a Ukrainian (Ph.D. who can’t get a job in his field) who did the repairs and has become one of her go to handymen. Some parts of the world are better than others for consuming less.
I noticed on your listing for the grey bedroom it does say shared bath, but on the blue one it says 2 bath. I think the app might have eaten your answer for bathrooms.
If you are re-doing any pictures you might think about what the space is going to look like when the guest shows up. For the living room is there really going to be a box of plastic bags on the rail at the top of the stairs? In the bathroom with the tub are all those products going to be arranged like that? Is the linen closet going to be open and look like that?
The electric cords behind the kitchen sink doesn’t look safe. When you rent the entire house out will they still be required?
Isn’t there a place to put in the size of all the beds? And I would move the picture of your bedroom to the end of the bedroom pictures for the whole house listing. If you don’t need it I might even drop to max 6 and take it out altogether and lock the room. It looks like your cozy place. I’d hate to see you get marked down because others don’t appreciate it.
Hey!! I live in Radford!!
I’m late to this party, but in case you can still use feedback (this is for the first one listed only):
I’d suggest more selling points in your headline and opening paragraph. “Renovated” doesn’t mean a lot to guests because they don’t know what it looked like before, and most would assume it’s renovated if you’re listing it on Airbnb.
Your opening paragraph is whimsical, honest, and charming, but I would focus on selling points here and move the “negative” bits to the Other Details to Note section, which you haven’t used.
I’d add much more detail in The Space section and add the Guest access section. I like to include a list of Amenity Highlights. I’d also suggest writing in a guest-centric way that enables guests to envision themselves in the space. And make use of the Location tab.
You also need photo captions.
I wrote an article that might be helpful: How to Write a Killer Short-Term Rental Listing « Katharine Hansen, PhD
Thanks for providing a link to your article - I enjoyed it and will relook at my listing and freshen it up using some of your tips! Couple of thoughts…for those of us with a long-time listing, changing the title may make it harder for someone who has stayed in the past to find us (not all guests know how to bookmark or go back to see the places they have stayed in in the past. I get a lot of older folks who don’t go more than one page deep in searching.) Also, I noticed you don’t have the actual speed of the wifi in your samples. We do not advertise the speed of wifi just in case there is a problem out of our control and the speed wouldn’t be as advertised. If you don’t give a specific speed, the guest can’t call out a “lack of amenity” if it gets slowed down by factors out of your control.
Thanks, Terry.
Changing the title certainly isn’t a must; I haven’t change my own in at least a year.
Good point about WiFi speed.
While I agree with most of your recommendations in that article, I have to say that your example of the intro description is one that would turn me off. I don’t want to be told what will blow my mind, or how something will make me feel. I also don’t like descriptions which make it sound like the host thinks their property is something exceptional. A straight, factual description, with an indication of who the listing would be suitable for, is what I would recommend. And exclamation points are also a turnoff for me- they convey being beaten over the head with what the host thinks I should be impressed with.