Airbnb partners with apartment buildings across the United States to curate a listing of locations for tenants to sublet to short-term tenants. Now you can sign a lease knowing that if you end up having trouble paying the rent, you can at least list your spare room on Airbnb.
New Airbnb Compatible Apartment Program currently includes more than 175 buildings in 29 cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Austin, Phoenix and Miami. Potential long-term tenants can browse apartment buildings by location and sort by highest rent, lowest rent, or how far they are from downtown.
Airbnb will finally show you the *actual* total price in search
Like any other real estate website, Airbnb’s long-term rental listings include carefully curated amenities checklists, floor plans, and real estate photographs to help you imagine the type of person you might be if you lived there. Potential tenants can contact each building’s management through Airbnb to ask specific questions, schedule a viewing, or if they would like to sign a lease.
But unlike other real estate websites, Airbnb also lists the number of nights per year tenants are allowed to sublet the apartment for short stays, which is determined by each building. It also includes an income calculator that potential renters can use to estimate how much they could earn by listing the place on Airbnb. This is adjusted based on the size of the apartment, the number of nights per month they intend to rent out, and based on the previous year of similar Airbnb bookings.
This income is not a sure bet, with a lot of guesswork and guesswork still involved in the equation. There is no guarantee that the renter will be able to rent out their spare room at Airbnb’s calculated listing price, and it’s unlikely that they’ll actually be booked for each day it’s listed. Still, it’s potentially useful in helping potential tenants make reasonable estimates.
Some apartment buildings discourage or prohibit short-term rentals, so it’s good to know that this shouldn’t be a problem for anyone finding their long-term rental through Airbnb.
Airbnb has been the subject of a lot of flack for supposedly contribute to higher rental costs, so offering tenants to pay said higher costs by subletting on Airbnb might sound a little bitter. But rent still has to be paid, and chances are you or your friends have used an Airbnb before, whatever impact you think that might have on housing affordability. You are also part of the problem.
It’s of course possible that people will use Airbnb’s accessible apartment program to find places they can sublet full-time. Ultimately, it will be up to the landlord to determine what type of tenant they will take.
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