Are you a full time or a part time host?

[Stephanie]

Hello everyone, 

When you start hosting one of the main things you have to consider is where are you going to find the time from, because as we know from conversation here in the CC, there is often a lot to do!

Some hosts host full-time, some part-time and some even juggling it around existing work commitments. Plus, perhaps your time changes depending on the seasons. 

How do you host? How do you manage your time with other life commitments?

Looking forward to hearing from you. 

Thanks,

[Henry376]

I did host in the Berkshires of Massachusetts next to the huge museum MoCA; but it was only seasonal

and I've now shirted to apartment rental on a yearly basis. The guests were largely weekend for some

versions of a six bedroom house, operated three summers, saw hundreds in all; always good. Henry [Surname hidden]

[Zainudin0]

I am 72 years old and a retired army officer. I have no other income and I expect the income from this can contrbute to my daily needs. Thats the reason I would like to do it full time.

[Lauris-and-Gene0]

After many years of living in other countries, we decided we wanted to return to the US. After some lengthy discussions about our requirements and wish list and after some (mostly online) research, we chose Wilmington, North Carolina (a state we had never been to before) as our next home. We love our new hometown for its small town feel, its plethora of art, theater, music and food opportunities, and its access to the ocean as well as the Cape Fear river. We soon realized however that (1) we had way more house than we needed and (2) we missed the community of international friends. AirBnB has solved both of those issues. We were surprised to have guests nearly every night during our first season. All sorts of different people. Different ages, different backgrounds. From many different places. We have enjoyed it tremendously. We are definitely part-time and I've found that it takes very little time to flip and clean the two guest rooms and bathroom between guests. I communicate a lot in advance of a guest's arrival but that's not a big time consumer. We are usually at home but have an electronic lock system with personal codes for each guest for their convenience. All of our guests have been interesting people. They visit our town for a variety of events and reasons. We've found that maybe a third are very busy and simply want a place to lay their heads, with little or no conversation. The rest are sociable types who spend time in the kitchen talking with us and enjoying the coffee bar. We love hearing about their travels and lives. It's slow here now and I'm looking forward to spring and a full house again.

[Andrew1991]

Ok, I will bite!  I'm an IT pro who works a 40 hour week supporting an entire region of offices as my day job.  We built two ADU's (accessory dwelling units) in 2014 and 2018.  We rent 4 spaces and live in the 5th.  I gross almost the same amount of money from our rentals (been incorporated since 2017 and we get a lot of repeat business.)  We would rather rent as many nights at a cheap price as possible.  Many hosts prefer the opposite.  I don't have the time to handle my day job and my AirBNB - I agree with the others who suggest that you should have a cleaning company and a landscape company at a minimum.  We use August smart locks and invite our guests to use the August app on their smart phone to unlock the door.  I really want to quit my day job but I can't because I will never make this much money ever again.  I'm 50 this year and my company was bought out by a bigger company so the job I have I would have never been hired for.  I wish AirBNB could somehow help provide hosts reasonable health insurance but that would require us to be their employees which is not likely to ever happen.  I like that AirBNB collects and remits occupancy taxes in most municipalities.  VRBO didn't do this which is why I changed to AirBNB years ago.  YMMV