Airbnb or Longer Term by Room for Househack?

[Connor Seymour]

Hi everybody, I'm 18yrs old and am looking to start my REI journey within the next year. I am currently looking at doing a househack in a traditional SFR, in a 3x2 or bigger. I am wondering what this community thinks about the rent by room strategy for a househack like this, as I've heard if done right, can produce good cashflow. I've also thought about the idea of putting the extra couple rooms on Airbnb and Vrbo. Obviously there will be more work with the STR strategy, but hopefully more cashflow. I'm just not sure how putting multiple rooms in the same house on those platforms would work. I could also potentially rent out the other rooms to other college students, as I would be close to a major university, and a few smaller ones. I'm just worried about the occupancy during the summer using that strategy, so I'm not super keen on that.

The financing shouldn’t be a big problem for me, as I could easily put down 10-15% on most of the properties I would be looking at.

[Anna Bielawski]

Hi Connor! 

I started my house hack as a STR, too, but I was able to rent out the other side of my duplex on Airbnb. You can definitely list multiple private rooms on the platform, that's actually super simple once you get into the platform and set up your listings. One piece of advice if you do gown this path- make your listings extremely clear to guests that they will be interacting with you and potentially interacting with other guests during their stay.

All that being said, I wonder if a traditional tenant might be better starting out since you will be sharing spaces and it's less to worry about on a day to day basis. Kind of nice to find friends to rent from you and build equity that way. Then you can use the equity to buy a second property for a full time Airbnb! Just a thought. 

Good luck!

-Anna