Pros And Cons Of Airbnb As A 5 Year Superhost

Airbnb has changed my life. No, I’m not being dramatic. But like anything, there are pros and cons of Airbnb to consider before becoming a host. I’ll take you through my thoughts in this article as a 5 star Superhost for the past 5 years.

Whether you’re just getting started or have been a host for years, there’s something for you in this article. I’m taking you through my top learnings from being on the platform for 5 years and going to show you what I would do as a host if I was starting from scratch today. I do these exact things when starting a new listing as well.

This post is all about the pros and cons of Airbnb.

Pros and Cons of Airbnb

Getting started

Back in 2019 when we bought our first Airbnb property, we had no intention of ever putting it up on Airbnb. You can check out our first listing here. We’ve hosted hundreds of guests and would love to host you at some point! We bought this property and intended to rent it out to long term tenants but were so torn because it was on our personal residence. We wanted it to be available for family and friends when they would come to visit. But we wanted to get into real estate investing and generate extra income, so we bought this property fully intending on turning it into a long term rental.

Our realtor team took us out to dinner to celebrate the closing of our first house and buying this new property and they told us about Airbnb. One of our realtors had been Airbnbing the bottom floor in his house and said he was generating $1,200 for a week. We were blown away! Our hope was to get $1,500 a month for this house as a long term rental and couldn’t believe that by pivoting to a short term rental we could potentially cover our mortgage. So we dove in and took the plunge.

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Running an Airbnb on your personal property

Pros

Now this may be the dream for some hosts. I know it was for me! We were so nervous pivoting from a long term rental to a short term rental. What gave me the peace of mind was knowing I lived next door and could respond immediately to any guest issue. I learned SO much those handful of years we lived next door and would not trade that experience for anything.

Cons

The cons here are almost the same as the pros. If you live on the same property as your Airbnb, you will inevitably become the point person for anything. I never systematized anything and took the DIY approach all the way down to cleaning myself. We did this until I was 37 weeks pregnant with my second baby. Being so pregnant forced me to hire a reliable cleaning team and put basic systems in place so the rental could operate without me.

Short term rentals vs long term rentals

Pros

Short term rentals or Airbnb gave us the freedom to make more revenue on our unit and have it available for family to use when they would stay with us. We loved having the ability to get creative with the design and curate an experience for our guests.

Cons

With long term rentals, you know and can vet who stays in your properties. There is a contract in place with expected rent and lease terms to lock in the income for a year. The hard part with short term rentals in the beginning was having confidence in the fact that our unit would be booked month after month. The first year was a rollercoaster. We didn’t know anything about high and low season and pricing strategies. It took years before we understood this and implemented all the right tools.

Dive into more of my research on this topic in this article!

Operating an Airbnb business

When operating an Airbnb business, there is a couple different ways this can be done. I’ll lay out the pros and cons of Airbnb business operations below.

Self managing

Pros

I am a huge fan of self managing your Airbnb portfolio. It took me 3 years to build and implement systems in my business but now it runs almost completely automated and I’ll do my first multiple six figure year this year. I didn’t hire a coach or anyone to teach me how to put the systems in place and a lot of this is due to a DIY mindset but it’s also because I just didn’t know.

Cons

I’m a big fan of running an automated Airbnb business but the cons are obvious. At the end of the day, the person that is responsible for your guest experience is you. There will be issues every once in awhile that will be stressful to deal with. But in my experience of managing both short term and long term rentals, I say the headaches in Airbnb are so much better to deal with.

Hiring a manager

Pros

So I preface this by saying that I have never hired a property manager to run my short term or long term rentals. What I have heard is that people who do this want the peace of mind that someone else will be handling any and all guest problems and they will never be bothered. They can turn their phone off, go out of cell range and collect passive income from their Airbnb business.

Cons

Hot take: I really don’t believe property managers are worth their fee. Most short term rental property managers will collect 20-30% of your top line revenue as a fee for managing. If your property does $100k a year, that’s $20k-30k right out of your pocket and most of your profit. And I’m super skeptical that a property manager will ever care as much as you do as the owner. If you want a true 5 star experience, I urge you to sign up for my email list that will let you know when my new product comes out all about my Airbnb strategy to automating your short term rental business.

What do you think about the pros and cons of Airbnb? I’d love to know in the comments below!

This post was all about the pros and cons of Airbnb.