While the profits to be gained by short-term renting have pushed many to try their hand at being an Airbnb (ABNB) -) host, the common assumption is that those doing it with regularity have to own the property that they're listing.
Major cities are increasingly cracking down on short-term rentals in general while most leases have some kind of clause limiting how and when one can sublet.
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But beyond moving to the more rural places where laws are more lax, there are still ways to earn money renting out somebody else's homes. As she recounts to Insider, former flight attendant Monica Lee White was looking to move away from the industry during the layoffs around the pandemic — not able to buy a property at the time, she decided to get into real estate by finding homes on Zillow (ZG) -) and reaching out to see if the owners wanted somebody to help them rent it.
Airbnb
Here is how one flight attendant got her start earning money on Airbnb
"By the time I was done compiling my list, I had over 250 properties, and all the landlords were saying no," White told Insider. "I almost gave up. But I was determined to find a place, and after many reach outs, I finally got my first landlord in Atlanta to say yes."
After persisting and reaching out to more owners, White soon found herself arranging the rentals of five properties in the Atlanta area and earned $136,000 within her first year of doing it.
While investment property owners have always relied on property managers to deal with the daily tasks around renting, White took things one step further in what in the industry is known as "rental arbitrage" — for her first property, she rented it out short-term, moved in briefly to set it up and take listing photos and then started capitalizing on the difference between long-term and short-term rental rates.
To keep this profitable, she needed to crunch the numbers for each specific property. In her search for homes, White came across landlords who agreed to let her do this if she paid twice the rent upfront. This did not work as a market nightly rate she would be able to charge would not make the endeavor worth the effort.
'This is not one of those businesses where you can start at zero dollars'
"This is not one of those businesses where you can start at zero dollars," White explains. "Even without owning the home, it can be expensive. When I got my first place, I paid a moving fee, I purchased furniture, and I hired a photographer, too."
Other expenses include furniture and décor items to make the listing stand out as well as insurance and certain repair and clean-up expenses that arise — one of the main selling points that helped White convince owners to let her do this was the offer to take care of maintenance issues and damages incurred by guests.
While this is a nonstandard way of earning money with real estate, White recommends those who are interested talk to different owners and see what kind of help they need — some of hers had never heard of rental arbitrage but were willing to give it a shot when she offered to take on more of the day-to-day of renting.
"If you allow someone to rent it out as an Airbnb, there is more risk as you're bringing more people into the home," she told Insider. "Always think and ask yourself: what is one thing you can do to make the landlord's life easier?"
