Airbnb / Short-Term Rental - Outlook for 2021

[Jason Muth]

Hi everyone - I'm curious to hear from other Airbnb / Short-Term Rental owners about your outlook for 2021.

I posted about this same topic in June after a few months of the pandemic and with a quite uncertain summer, and I realize that performance and outlook is very dependent upon location. Nonetheless, I would love to hear your updated opinions given the current state of the pandemic (rolling out vaccines now and aggressively in the coming months, but with COVID still running wild everywhere at the moment).

Happy to share our 2020 results - I was surprised by the performance of our two STRs in 2020, and that looks to be continuing into 2021:

- Our lake home in Farmington, New Hampshire absolutely killed it. Best year in the past 5 of having owned it. I keep saying if I owned 3 other lake homes nearby, they too would have been fully rented. Rentals continued through the fall and winter, and we're well ahead of pace with 2021 reservations (About 50% of my gross revenue projection for 2021 is booked already. At this point in 2019, I had 6% of my full 2020 revenue booked).

-Our condo in Provincetown, Massachusetts on Cape Cod held steady, performing about 81% of what we did during our first year renting in 2019, but it required some creative pricing and hustle to keep it filled. Provincetown did a fantastic job pivoting this year as best they could, but all of the major theme weeks (Carnival, Bear Week, July 4 Circuit Week, Family Week) were canceled, so we couldn't charge the premiums that we usually would have during those weeks. Friends who go to Provincetown regularly are optimistic that the theme weeks will be back in 2021 assuming we reach a critical mass of vaccinations by the end of May.

What did you see with your Short-Term rentals?

(Oh, and were you lucky enough to get into the Airbnb IPO early when they offered hosts the opportunity to buy shares??)

[Carolyn Fuller]

Our 2 STR listings are both in Cambridge, MA. After all our spring bookings were cancelled, we took one of our listings, which is a guest room in our home, off the market all together and switched the other listing, which is an in-law apartment attached to our home, to extended stay through the end of May 2021. We are hoping to put the in-law apartment back on the market for summer 2021 but so much depends upon how well the pandemic is brought under control by then. I don't know for sure since we took our listings offline but I suspect that the urban STR market collapsed in 2020. I know I personally had no desire to escape to another urban environment (other than a moment of wishing I could experience Venice when there were no other tourists ).

If we are able to bring the pandemic under control by summer 2021, I suspect there will be a lot of pent up energy to visit all the vibrant destination cities around the world that were closed down and not at all vibrant in 2020.

And, yes, we were able to purchase the 200 Airbnb IPO Directed Shares. In 24 hours, the increased investment value more than made up for the cancelled bookings we experienced last spring but I still miss hosting guests from around the world. And, oh God, do I miss staying in quirky Airbnb's around the world!