12.04.14: Our experience as a Customer of Airbnb

We’ve used airbnb, flipkey, and vrbo in the past few years. We stayed in a suburban apartment for our WA DC trip. We rented an old farmhouse in Denver for a vacation with my parents. We have a beach house reserved for another vacation with my parents this Christmas.

We also rented an apartment for our recent weekend getaway to downtown Seattle. Bruce and I have done this trip every year for the past seven years. Drop the kids off with the grandparents, rent a hotel, and explore the city we so love. This year we decided to do things a little different and started looking at vacation rentals.

This unit was advertised as Charming Apt, VERY Central Location. Both were very true. The ad went on to say: Downtown attractions - Pike Place Market, Seattle Art Museum, Benaroya Hall, Pioneer Square, 5th Avenue Theater and many more - are within an easy 10 minute stroll, as are numerous pubs, bars and restaurants. The apartment features high ceilings, classic moldings, bay windows and hardwood floors. Wireless internet, digital cable and a landline phone are all available for use during your stay. I would describe the floorplan as a studio with a bedroom alcove, since there is no door to close up the bedroom. The building is 1900’s with tons of charm, a claw foot bathtub, and spitting steam heat.

I have two reasons for wanting to stay in as many vacation rentals as I can, besides the fact that it is such an adventure.

First, someday I would love to live in a small downtown apartment. Bruce doesn’t have faith that I can purge my belongings and lifestyle enough to live in under 800 square feet, but I really want to! This tiny apartment gave us plenty of discussion fodder – “the kitchen has pretty good storage, but no dishwasher, no laundry, no dining area”. The bedroom and living room were much more challenging – “there are so many windows, where would any furniture go?” Even sleek Ikea furniture wouldn’t fit in the tight quarters. And only one closet in the entire unit. Some downtown floorplans are more modern and functional, but this is going to be a huge adjustment. Never mind how to host relatives (for a week or even one meal!) and whether we could get by with no vehicles.

Second, another dream for the future is to own a small multi, rent out most of the units, and use a few for vacation rentals. This would give us some flexibility for hosting relatives and a way to spread the rental risk and share the city we love with others. Given that, I am terribly interested in how the vacation rental logistics work. This is the first time we never saw or spoke to our host, even though she was in the same building. There was no need, she had everything under control. We wondered what arrangement she has with the landlord, since he was on-site and ddidn'tseem perplexed by our presence.

All of the properties we've experienced have had quirks that we weren't fond of, but all met our needs wonderfully, and all were experiences we would repeat.