Mark SimpsonHelping short-term rental hosts get the tools, tactics and training to grow direct bookings with confidence

Turning Our Home into an Airbnb Business: Surprising Success Story

19 Jul 2023 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:48

A first-person YouTube video by Mark Simpson recounting how his family turned an extra home into an Airbnb business. In this segment the speaker explains that his wife listed the house on Airbnb around 2018–2019 despite his initial skepticism; their goal was to cover taxes and maintenance, but the listing performed much better — the first year’s hosting revenue fully paid off the house (they had no mortgage) — and they decided to expand the business thereafter.

Questions this video answers

Around 2018–2019.

First-year hosting revenue fully paid off the house (they had no mortgage).

Chapters

So we had to figure out what we wanted to do with this home. We didn't want to sell it, and we didn't want to rent it out long term because we still wanted to be able to use it for ourselves, for family, or for times that we came to visit as well. So my wife decided to list on Airbnb. I thought it was a terrible idea. That was it back in 2018, 2019. And I was like, no one's going to rent this place. I mean, why would anyone rent it? But as you can probably guess, she won that debate. And so we listed it and hoped to just make enough money to pay the property taxes and, you know, any other kind of maintenance that comes up. But it ended up doing a lot greater than that. The first year of hosting the house was fully paid off. We had no mortgage on it, so we could have just kept, like, collecting that income and left it at that, but we just decided to grow the business from there.