Owning vs Renting a Vacation Rental

[Carla Gordon]

Hi all. I’m really interested in starting an airbnb in San Antonio (an area that I like to visit for fun and is not too far from where I live in Houston). I will stay in the property every couple of months for a weekend or so but then would rent it out on airbnb when I’m not at the property. I’ve been going back and forth between whether I want to wait until I have the funds to purchase a property for this purpose vs obtaining a lease and subletting that property when I am not in town (with landlord permission of course). Interested in your thoughts

[Cassandra Staffieri]

Well.. when I wanted to start an Airbnb in January 2017 I didn’t have enough for a down payment on a house in a Boston. I started with renting one apartment in Boston and then Airbnb’ing it. Fast forward to now, I have 9 Airbnb rentals and I had enough money to put down on a 2 family in May of this year (not Airbnb). Airbnb has been extremely profitable for me and the landlords all know I airbnb the apartments. They raised it $100 each apartment after the year lease was up. It didn’t effect me at all, but I’m in Boston where the Airbnb business is extremely profitable. The issue is, if I bought in Boston, and then decided to Airbnb, I wouldn’t be able to do that come August 2019 because of the new laws. So honestly, it all depends. I’m extremely happy with the path I chose.