Any Bay Area hosts want to share their Airbnb experience?

Question

Looking to start airbnb rentals here in Oakland/Napa/ San Jose. I'd love to hear advice,suggestions,learning experiences.

Juwan Rohan · Answer

Thanks so much for responding. Santa Rosa was also in the question but a fit further from me. Has anyone had success in Oakland?

Cheryl Vargas · Answer

@Jim G.I have heard the same thing about Napa. They only allow 50 licenses or so for the whole city.

@Juwan Rohan

Definitely choose another city besides Napa.

I have a STR in the city of Santa Rosa and it has been really profitable from April- Sept, but the winter is breaking even. A friend of mine has a STR in Santa Rosa and she said the same about her profit time frame. We were able to get STR permits easily here, tho.

Mike Bolen · Answer

Napa Valley is VERY aggressive on policing non-permitted short term rental units. This poor guy was just fined over $122,000 https://tinyurl.com/reqn9hq .

This guy was actually arrested at his home and imprisoned for running an Airbnb in Napa without a permit https://tinyurl.com/tzcvx4g . As far as I know, the city of Napa is the only city in the country to actually arrest and imprison a person for running a non-permitted Airbnb.

We have run a lot of research and manage many short term rentals. The easiest way to analyze a deal is to simply make sure your property does an absolute minimum of 20% of the purchase price per year. At this level, you will make a small profit. Most properties we manage do 33%+ of the purchase price annually in gross income. If you violate the 20% rule you'll lose money and in all cases be better off doing a long term rental on the property.

Jim G. · Answer

I don't think you can do short term rental like Airbnb in Napa easily.  My info probably is old.  But as my knowledge, it is very hard to impossible to get short term rental license.

-Jim

Any Bay Area hosts want to share their Airbnb experience?

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