Sublet rental as an Air BNB

[Jennifer Soelberg]

I'm throwing around the idea of renting a property and subletting it as a short-term rental. I'm unable to buy right now, so I figured this would be a way around that. My area has a lot of wineries and the city is growing. I've done some research and the few properties that are on Air BNB, are priced relatively high and are almost 100% full for the next 2 months. An obvious complication is finding a landlord that would agree to this. Am I crazy? Any thoughts?

[Ethan Cooke]

@Jennifer Soelberg - Yes, there are many entrepreneurial folks across the country who are renting places from property owners and then AirBnB’ing them. Following in the footsteps of long-time “rental arbitrageurs” like @Al Williamson and 

@J. Martin, I am building a portfolio of properties like this just south of San Francisco. The business model is to rent to business travelers for 30+ days.

Feel free to PM me to discuss, and please search BP for “AirBnB from landlord” and similar phrases. You’ll find a lot of great threads about this topic.

As @Paul Sandhu mentions, it has to be a win-win. The top benefits that homeowners typically want when I negotiate a rental contract are:

- higher rent than what they are asking (usually 5-10% is sufficient)

- free property management and maintenance so it’s a truly “passive investment” for them

- rent auto deposited into their bank account every month before the 1st of the month 

- I will return the property to them at the end of the lease better than when they rented it to me

I hope that helps!