Air BnB/VRBO in a College town

[Alexander Knowles]

Hi BP Community -

Has anyone had any experience doing short-term (Air BnB/VRBO primarily) in a college town? We have a two-bed studio unit behind our larger single-family that has been converted into a business. It is currently leased and due to expire in August. We want to have the flexibility to use the studio unit during the week for business purposes and then have it rented during weekends. We are planning to put between $5K-$7,5K of cosmetic renovations into the unit in order to capture a premium price. 

Our college town has around 15,000 students that makeup roughly 35,000 of the total population. We have a division-1 football & basketball teams that regularly attract outside visitors, as well as having Interstate-80 run right through our town. There are a TON of big chain hotels/motels in town. 

Any pearls and tips to make this work? Being a smaller town, do you get the same volume of visitors to make it worthwhile? 

[Andrea Cole]

Our Airbnb is in a college area--we probably have 5-6 big schools in a 30 mi radius--and it's a smaller town (High Point, NC). The hotel selection isn't the best so our area has that going for us. BUT, the most important piece of info I discovered is the in-state/out-of-state ratio. The university closest to us is heavily out of state so we get a lot of booking for those visiting.  We don't get many from the other schools which have a high in-state %. I also track academic calendars (move-in weekend, parents weekend, graduation) and pump up the rates during those weekends since the area is flooded with traveling parents. Good luck!