Hosting on AirBnB is an enticing side-hustle – but I’ll never do it again
Oyez! Oyez! This is a public service announcement. I would like to issue a warning about the perils of pimping your property.
As Chancellor Rachel Reeves prepares to hammer everyone with assets, we are about to enter the era of the strategic side hustle. What better way to drum up extra cash than putting your house on Airbnb? How marvellous to be able to “make your property work for you”, as the booming short-let industry likes to spin it. Times being tough and all that, surely only a fool would leave a nice pad empty, when with a modest investment in fluffy white towels and a quick once-over, the place could be making a tidy profit?
Well as one who has ventured down this enticing-sounding route, let me tell you: there be dragons. Do not enter without shares in Egyptian cotton sheet suppliers; teams of cleaners on speed dial and a supply of disposable gloves.
Oh I know it’s tempting – especially if you happen to live in a property hotspot. In my case, this happened quite by accident after a swanky private members’ club opened an outpost up the road. Granted, the so-called Chipping Norton Set – Jeremy Clarkson, David Cameron and that bloke from Blur – had already lent my particular part of the Cotswolds a certain cachet.
Then came Soho Farmhouse and the post-pandemic rural stampede. Suddenly, the local boozers were being taken over by DFL (down from London) hipsters and our village kept popping up in magazines. Now it’s overrun with Instagrammers and other beautiful people, and they all need places to stay. And so it was that I found myself letting my house to merry weekenders. Nothing quite prepared me for the trauma.
Granted, I am a little precious about the place – or as precious as anyone with multiple children, sprawling houseplants and a 19-year-old cat with feline dementia can be. Eau de cat litter notwithstanding, I like to think my gaff is a cut above the rest. For anyone contemplating becoming an Airbnb host, this is a bad base from which to start.
For as I have found with driving old bangers, there’s a definite liberation in not caring. Dented the bumper? That’s what it’s there for. Bashed the wheel arch? Oh well – the trim is already hanging off. As for the VW logo on the front grille, someone pinched it long ago, leaving my car looking like one of those tragic dehorned rhinos. Whatever.
But scuff my spotless walls with your suitcases? Toss your used blister plaster in my Yukka? That is war. Don’t think I won’t notice. For as Farrow & Ball say on their paint chart, white is never just white – especially not if it’s seen too many grubby hands.
What this means is permanent paranoia about bad guests.
Truth be told, the vast majority are very nice. The first lot were particularly forgiving, after my listing inadvertently went live two weeks before I intended to start, complete with an erroneous price. Within hours of the advert’s accidental appearance, my phone was melting with bookings for bargain breaks. To my horror, a number of guests had already paid, so there was no going back. I had just three days to shove a decade’s worth of family clutter under the beds. I must have burned about 9,000 calories in stress.
Our guinea pig guests not only overlooked charred frying pans, mismatched crockery and kitchen cupboards full of half used condiments – they left a nice note and a gift.
Several other groups then came and went without drama. Indeed, after an eye-watering capital outlay on boutique hotel quality bed linen and pastel-coloured saucepans, everyone seemed delighted. Yee-haw, I thought – this is easy money!
Then came the horror: a couple who appear to have come from the other side of the world to the Cotswolds for a weekend of debauchery in front of the TV. Rocking up at the train station, a bucolic six-minute stroll from the house, they were shocked to discover there’s no Uber in the sticks, and affronted by the suggestion they could walk. Having mustered a minicab from a neighbouring shire, they arrived in an indignant fluster, and it was all downhill from there, not helped by rain so torrential that the roof sprung two leaks. The annual village fete featuring Morris dancers, an egg-throwing contest, and raucous singing late into the night failed to impress, as did my antiquated Smart TV. Since I stopped using it when multiple buttons replaced “on/off”, sadly I couldn’t help. Cue a barrage of increasingly exasperated text messages. Eventually, they gave up and decided to make their own entertainment.
Quite what this involved I would rather not know. Suffice to say, a month later, I am still finding disturbing detritus linked to questionable recreational activities under my roof. They left odd-looking pills on the carpet, plundered the family fridge and gifted me an old pair of spectacles and one of those free sleeping masks you get on overnight flights. I was forced to replace an entire set of luxury bed linen and send a super kingsize duvet to an industrial laundry, wiping out any profit.
Frankly, this misadventure has put me right off. And that, my friends, is the risk you take when you welcome total strangers into your house. Most are wonderful, but a bad apple can leave a very unpleasant taste in the mouth.
By the way, the miscreants nonetheless left five-star feedback. How nice. Perhaps they were still high?