After we sold our rural cabin, we put the proceeds into a cute-but-tired beach house on the Delaware shore. We found an adorable house in a Key West style (elevated on pilings) and took the plunge! But the house was in terrible shape. It smelled awful, the furniture was unpleasant, and the flowery couch was always mildewy and slightly damp. Yuck!! Here are some of the photos we took on our walk-through. Did you notice that the mirror in the living room is framed using the same material as the couches? Wow. We took possession of the…
I have two more lessons learned, and I’ve saved the biggest ones for last! These are a little bit unexpected, perhaps, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts. If you’re an Airbnb host or a guest, what do you think about these ideas? Have you experienced these issues firsthand? 4. Allow dogs. I was dead-set against this one, but John insisted. And now I have to admit he was right! Probably 80% of our guests brought their dogs. We had a few very minor issues — one dog chewed the armrest on one…
After we finished the cabin in late 2020, we rented it on Airbnb. It was a good side gig for us for a while, but then the extra work became overwhelming. (We both have full-time jobs, we have four kids, and the cabin was two hours from our home.) If we had set up the business differently from the beginning, I think it would’ve been much easier for us. Now that we’re planning to open a new Airbnb in a few months, I’ve been thinking about the lessons we learned and how we…
If you follow me on Instagram, you know that this past summer we sold a rural cabin we owned in West Virginia. We’d operated it as an Airbnb for about two years, and the business was going well. But the property required a lot of upkeep, and every time we needed someone like a plumber or an electrician, it was a huge pain to find someone to drive to such a rural location. We decided to switch things up and used the proceeds from the sale to buy a condo in Bethany Beach, Delaware. More on that later…