Do you remove personal items when renting out entire house?

[Alyssa-and-Jon0]

Hi!

I'm new to hosting and am welcoming my first guest in two weeks. My question is how much of my personal belongings should I remove. I have added locks to my master closet as well as the closet in the nursury. I plan to remove some items (more along the lines of important documents, etc) to those closets.

But I'm wondering about other things, like should the drawers in my bedroom be empty? I'm not concerned about stealing, but just wondering what people normally do and what guests expect when renting a personal home. And I'm assuming the fridge and freezer should be empty? I do plan to stock the fridge with some staples (eggs, milk, condiments, etc) but that's about it. Is this standard?

I would say in general I am a very minimalist person. My house is pretty much Kondoed (Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up) so the drawers are exceedingly organzied, they just wouldn't be empty.

Thanks!

Alyssa

[Linda108]

Your listing is quite nice, @Alyssa-and-Jon0.  Since you are renting an entire home, you need to make it feel like the guest has access to the whole space, so your personal items should be minimized.  Consider your competition, which would be homes that are not also the personal home of the host.  That being said, your minimum is only 3 days, so it is not the same as guest who stay a week or more.  Just make your home more about the guest and less about you.

I did look at your calendar availability.  With a 3 day minimum, you are not really very available until February.  As a new host, you get a "bump" by Air BNB for a short while and that is very helpful.  If guests cannot book your place for a couple of months, then you are wasting this special time.  Can you open some more dates in the next couple of months? Hope this helps

[Alyssa-and-Jon0]

Thanks Linda! I think I’m goong to err on the side of remove more rather than less. 

Regarding my calendar, you’re right in that we don’t have a lot of availability. It’s my home so I only have it open when I know I’ll be gone or when we could leave if the place is booked. I had the whole month of March opened up and then we got a booking for a week so I blocked the rest of the month. 

[Alyssa-and-Jon0]

Also, I’m just trying to figure out if renting it while we are gone is even a good idea... It’s a TON of work getting the place ready and we shall see how the guests are...

[Linda108]

@Alyssa-and-Jon0  Probably you should have a locked area or cupboard or maybe the garage that you specify in your rules as not guest accessible. This is a bit of a hassle every time you rent out the entire house.  Most people do that with a longer minimum stay.

If you are going to be out of the area, do you have someone who can act in your place?  If a guest's vacation is interrupted because something goes wrong and is not quickly fixed, you will likely lose the guest payment and get bad reviews.  Many stories about hosts trying to handle stuff remotely.

[Emiel1]

Hi,

I am not addressing the drawers, etc...but have some concerns about your listing:

Your listing says it is a 8 guests accomodation. Only after the 7th guest you charge a little more money. But your sleeping arrangements are limited, as some guests have to sleep on airbed and/or couch. Your price per night seems very low to me, max 8 persons have access to a whole house ! Maybe consider to charge extra allready after the 4th guest ? Did you think also about setting a deposit ?

Also be carefull with invitations like "You are welcome to have family or friends over". The booking scope is set to minimal 3 nights, perfect for some people to rent your house as (cheap) party location.

Just some concers, best regards, Emiel

[Alyssa-and-Jon0]

Thanks Emiel! You brought up some things I hadn’t considered. I’m still tweaking the #of people/beds how much to charge extra and so on. 

I know people say a lot about what airbnb suggests you pay, but they seem to think I charge too much? I’m new with no reviews so I tried to be competitive on pricing. 

[Alyssa-and-Jon0]

Also, I’m hoping that I can weed out possible parties via conversations with guests. The two I have so far are families with numerous young children in town to visit the city or attend a wedding. But perhaps I should be more explicit in the listing that this isn’t to be a party house!

[Scott-And-Nicole0]

We are in the process of renting out our primary house on the weekends when we are out of town. We currently rent a second home which we initially set up as a rental but renting out ones primary house is a different mentality. Any useful tips or experiences on renting ones primary house?  Thanks for any replies. Nicole Jones

[Julie143]

We rent out our primary house.

The most challenging thing for me is getting our personal things out of the space. We put locks on a couple of the closets and on the office and basement doors. The first few reservations I was literally throwing stuff in there shortly before check-in time. So stressful!

My suggestion would be to do the organization of your personal stuff a day or two before a reservation starts. Then do the cleaning the day of. 

Another tips is to buy  extra laundry baskets and flexible rubber tubs.  I put items in these, sorted by room they belong in. It’s actually a good way to de-clutter, because you realize what things you don’t really use. If you don’t want to get fancy, you can use garbage bags instead. The key is to put like items with like items. I keep my baskets and bins in locked closets or the office, depending on which floor they belong on. It saves me a lot of up and down the stairs.

If we have a couple of reservations in a short period of time, most of the stuff never comes out of the office/basement/private closets.

For me, it’s important to remove all personal items. The guest closets and the drawers are completely empty. There is nothing in the bathrooms except  what’s supposed to be there for the guests. There are a few very expensive pieces of kitchen equipment, like German knives, that I lock up to. I have cheaper ones for the guests. Unfortunately there are people out there who steal. The fewer items you have to keep track of the better. I strive to leave exactly what guests need, but not a lot of extra, useless stuff.

As the other poster mentioned, you are competing with pristine properties that are solely used for Airbnb. People don’t want to see your clothes, shoes, bills, junk mail etc.

I do leave books on the bookshelves. And a few selected board games and puzzles in my sons’ rooms.