How to start an AirBnB

[Anxhela Musta]

Hello! My husband and I live in an apartment building owned by my boss. He lets us live in one of the apartments for free! Yay for us! Also there is 2 more empty apartments in this same building that are currently empty! Today I had the idea to present my boss with a plan! I offered to fix up both apartments (they need some work) and advertise them on as AirBnB in exchange for a %. I’d be dong all the managing and he’d only collect part of the income! This is where I got myself in a pickle! I know nothing about this. Initially I thought ‘well we’ll fix it up a bit, clean it real good and post it on the AirBnB website’ but after my boss accepted my offer I kinda got cold feet. It cannot be that easy, right? So I’m here now looking for any ideas and advise! Thank you!

[Mike Shemp]

@Anxhela Musta - Depending on how you do this, it would be considered the co-hosting model or rental arbitrage model.

The way you described it above fits more into the co-hosting model, where you are just taking a % of the rental income for your services.

The other model is the rental arbitrage model where you rent the rooms as a long-term tenant, and then you re-rent them out on AirBnB and keep all the rental income with the idea that if your AirBnB net rental income > long-term rent payment, then you make money.

The co-hosting model is generally less risk, and less reward.  The arbitrage model is generally more risk, but potentially more reward.

And of course its very important to have the right short-term rental insurance in place before renting it out in either scenario.

Mike