Just got back from my first trip to Florida and my 2nd Airbnb stay. First off, I thought it was going to hate Florida because of the heat but it wasn’t too bad and the beauty of the state made up for it. I realized that my area must still be in a peak RE market because I’m not seeing any deals. Obviously, I don’t know what kind of market the central west coast of Florida is in currently, but I saw overgrown lawns in average developments all over the place. I’m not seeing that here yet at all. Also, Florida must like building housing developments. There were new ones going up all over the place down there.

Our 2nd Airbnb was probably as much of a learning experience as the 1st time.

There were things I like and didn’t like. We had chores, which I didn’t like. Washing pool towels when we left, taking trash to the curb, letting the pool cleaner in to weekly service the pool. Maybe that’s normal with Airbnb, not sure. The house was immaculate though. The neighborhood was not. It’s hard to research that entirely from Pa. To compare it to this area, it was a basic first time home buyer type development one step above a trailer park. The neighbors next door were sketchy gangbanger types. That concerned me with 5 kids there. Also, it would concern me about creating an Airbnb with next door neighbors. Especially when your neighbor sells and you have no idea who’s moving in next door. That could ruin your guests stay. Also, I was constantly asking my kids to be a little quiet in the pool since the neighbors were in their own homes and may have needed to be up for work the next day. It would concern me investing in an Airbnb and then have a neighbor become vindictive when you have guests over.

Thank you for sharing that experience.

They are building a lot around here as well.

Old American ways are certainly vanishing.

The younger generation loves the digital world, and the older generations are dying off.

Nice!

I booked a VRBO for the first time for a trip in November. It's out in the middle of nowhere, so finding a hotel within a 30-minute drive of the place we're going is difficult. I was surprised that there was an extra 12.45% charge to VRBO on top of the actual booking price itself. ($795 to the host, $99 to VRBO.)

My niece owns an AirBnb on a lake in the Madison area that she's selling. It was going well for 5 years. Then a new family in the area started using their pier to fish and hang out which for the exclusive use of the Airbnb guests. Then the neighbors began harassing the guests and my niece with nasty notes in the mailbox of the Airbnb.

The city I live in does not allow short term rentals and I would only buy a home for myself in a city or HOA that does not allow them.

People who rent them are on vacation. They are going to use the pool, they are going to cook out, they are going to make noise even if they are respectful people.

We used an Airbnb once in Bradenton Florida and have a good experience. Ours was professionally managed and there were minor chores like putting out the garbage, washing towels, loading the dishwasher and etc. I saw it as the normal stuff we would otherwise do at home anyway.

I would not own one though. Too much risk and work. Management fees are higher than with LT rentals and I've no interest in the hospitality business.

Like GKARL, I have stayed in AirBnBs in Hawaii and New Orleans that were professionally managed but asked for minor chores to be done upon vacating. We researched the chore instructions, reviews, and neighborhoo before booking.

That was nice of you to ask your kids to be quiet in the pool. I hope they enjoyed the water otherwise. I'm glad that the neighbors left you alone.

When I think about AirBnB, I think about the effect that they have to on the timeshare industry.

I've tried VRBO a couple times. A lot of airbnbs now advertise on regular travel sites such as travel advisor, booking.com Etc so it's kind of hard to tell what you're getting.

In our case the amenities were closed/inoperable the whole time even though we weren't told that in advance. Had we known up front, we would have not booked the place because we were counting on some of the amenities to be functional.

Another one we stayed at had all kinds of crumbs and debris between the sofa cushions that had obviously not been professionally cleaned.