Renting a room in vacation home, how'd you get spouse on board?

Question

So we have a vacation / second home in another state that we generally use about 1 week a month. I suggested to my wife that maybe it would be a good idea to rent a room out to accomplish two things, bring in a little cash and have someone at the house so it was not vacant when we were not there. The house is in a historical district, walking distance to a University, a historic Main Street area and not far from a Community College, so it's in a somewhat touristy location with a lot of potential students as well.

We talked about it a little and she was on board with the idea so I posted an ad on craigslist and got an inquiry a few hours later. The potential tenant is a college student, just starting their second year that works at an upscale restaurant walking distance from the house. Student currently rooms with 2 other students in an apt whose lease is up in Sept. The other 2 roommates are moving elsewhere, so student needs to find a new place. Our place looks to be ideal. Sounds good so far, right?

I advise wife that we have a potential tenant and suggest the steps to begin vetting the tenant. A few hours later she tells me, No, she's not comfortable with a stranger being in the house when she's there - in other words, no deal, no renting a room.

Wife said she'd be OK with renting out the place as a VRBO when we're not using it, but no renting rooms. I'm good with going down the VRBO path, but really liked the idea of renting out just one room so the place would not be vacant when we were not using it and the rent would have been almost 2/3 of our carrying costs for that house.

Has anyone run into this and if so how did you deal with it?

Kevin C. · Answer

We've discussed this and will explore VRBO/AirBNB at some point.

We don't have to do anything, we didn't buy this property with the intent to monetize it, we bought it for personal reasons. It was after we owned it and had used it a number of times it occurred to me that maybe we should be doing something with it besides having it sit vacant the majority of the time.

We will continue to use it, as it's located near where we both grew up, near our long time friends and near her family. It's also located in a historic, touristy area, so there will always be potential.

Curious, how would you go about finding someone to manage a VRBO/AirBNB property when the property is not located in a well known tourist hotspot? There are only a few vacation rentals in the immediate area. Some, based on their calendars, appear to do quite well.

Lance Robinson · Answer

Kevin - Few thoughts.

1) I personally would rather VRBO/AIRBNB it out and have someone manage it for you. This way you should make more money (depending where it is), it will always be vacant when you want to use it, and it will always be CLEAN, which is key. Because there will be a cleaning service paid by the renters after every move out so it's always spotless upon arrival.

2) You need to discuss the why together. Find out together, why you would want to rent a room or VRBO the place out. If you can create a vision and what that will actually do for you, rather than not keep it vacant and earn extra income from it, then you will align your goals to decide whether or not you want to do that.

Good luck!

Lance

Kevin C. · Answer

We do have an income stream from rentals, from rentals we own near where we live.

This second home is new territory for us, we don't know that area from a rental perspective like we do the area near where we live. I was looking for a simple way to generate a little cash with the property and learn more about the rental potential in that area at the same time.

VRBO could very well be far more lucrative than renting a room anyway, but it's also something we know little about, so it'll definitely be more work to explore that option. It is something we'd like to get into, so this is probably as good a place to start as any.

Casey Blakely · Answer

Hi Kevin,

I think you made a wise decision to listen to your wife's concerns, and use your property as a VRBO instead. Sharing a living space with a stranger (no matter how great your background check) is very different for men and women. She could driver herself crazy thinking of all the scenarios where her privacy/safety could be compromised. If I were in her situation with my husband, I'd probably feel the exact same way, even if the tenant was another woman.

That being said, with the extra income coming in from using your property as a VRBO, could you perhaps invest in a separate single family or multifamily and use that as a nice steady stream of rental income? That way you'd at least have your vacation rental occupied some of the time when you guys aren't there, and you'd also have a steady monthly income as well.

Just a thought. Seems to be a nice compromise for both you and your wife.

- Casey

Kevin C. · Answer

We're there at random times, no set schedule, so there would be no way to rent a room to someone that was to be there when we were not except by going the VRBO route.

I'm OK going that route, and with that, there is no privacy or security issue since we would only VRBO the unit when we would not be there.

My thought was, renting a room would be far less work, and the bonus being we wouldn't have concerns of a vacant house for extended periods.

Going the route of just renting a room, the room we would rent is not a suite, it's an upstairs bedroom. House has one bath, downstairs, so the bathroom would be shared as would the rest of the living space, kitchen, laundry area etc.

With the privacy and security concerns, I'm going to step away from the 'rent a room' option and works towards getting it set up as a VRBO. For future reference, I'd still like to know how those that have or currently do rent a room, in either their primary residence or home they reside in occasionally, how did you address privacy and security concerns?

Phil Salazar · Answer

Happy wife, happy life. Usually wife is right., they have this keen intuition. She may have some valid points. Start small and see how it evolves is my suggestion.

Colleen F. · Answer

If it isn't really a separate suite it is like having a guest when you are there. I can see her point regarding privacy and maybe you need to find somethings to try out before you would go with anything longer term. If you aren't going to be there for a few weeks try a VRBO (actually though there is a lot less vetting of the tenants with VRBO/airbnd ) or do a trial period. Have you gone over screening criteria with her so she knows it is not just a random person off craigslist. To a certain extent you might need to treat this like a roommate that you must be okay with how they behave in general.

Alternately you could also look for someone who is a match for when you aren't there. If you are always there on the weekend look for a weekday person. There are not a lot of people like this but it happens when your job moves to another area and you don't. I would not push too hard, it probably isn't worth it. You might find a good match she can live with that isn't full time. You might give it a couple of trial runs and one or both of you doesn't like it.

Kevin C. · Answer

I see where the privacy issue would come into play, not something I really considered, but it sounds like that may be the bigger issue. I get it, many times I'll be working from home while we're there and 'getting dressed for work' never crosses my mind.

Eugene Kemp · Answer

We rented out a room on Airbnb for about a year. My wife hated it because she didn't feel comfortable going downstairs for coffee in the morning without being totally dressed and ready for her day. Having said that, she didn't fight me on it because I did everything to maintain the situation and it brought in a few bucks and gave me something to do. Ended up she won in the end, because the city closed us down due to not allowing short term rentals. Still wondering how they found out....hmmmm. :-)

Renting a room in vacation home, how'd you get spouse on board?

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