All Forum Posts by: John Carbone

We strongly do not prefer AirBnb as well, but we do use it in the Smokys.  It is location dependent.  The cabins closer to PF are 90/10 vrbo to airbnb, but we have one cabin out in Wears Valley, that when we got it was 95% airbnb.  It took a long time for that to get traction on VRBO.  Have no idea why.  The people we bought it from said they were primary airbnb with very little vrbo.  We had many phone calls with VRBO to try and figure out why this was.  It just didn't make sense to us.  Anyway, that cabin is about 70/30 airbnb now.  

For us this is how AirBnb works in that region.  It fills in the gaps and also provides those last minute bookings.  BUT it also provides us with the worst guests as well.  Whenever we have a bad guests and go back and look, 99% of the time it was an airbnb booking.

Both airbnb and VRBO collect and remit the taxes, prior to that it was a pain ;)

 We use it but are not getting that many books with them on our cabin.

I think you want to be at 20 percent or more. Anything 10 and under just buy dividend stocks. 

One non-destination location type of Airbnb that I have booked that I suspect are reasonably successful are guest suites, ADUs, etc in homes off of highways or between / near destinations. I suspect that these listings help with the mortgages of the primary residences.

BTW, every single one of these Airbnbs have been really fabulous experiences, much nicer than the nearby hotels would have been.

I was wondering if any members on here have had success in markets that don't fit the destination/vacation type areas. For example I am located about 40 mins from Nashville Tennessee are people renting that far from a destination?  I am also about 3 1/2 hours from the smoky mountains are people using a short term rental as they drive to there next destination. I do see a few air bnb rentals in my areas and it looks like they are at about a 50% rented per month. With that being the case they wouldn't cash flow much more then my long term rentals in the area.

Another idea we have been thinking about is having a tiny house on our property. The only problem we have with that is we are on septic so we wouldn't be able to add it to the plumbing system. Are there pre made tiny houses set up on trailers that have plumbing systems systems similar to a camping trailer that i could take to the dump after a renter is done with there stay. I could purchase a plot of land and put it on that but think that cost of doing septic/water/and power would be pretty high for the returns we could get off the rental.