Investing in weekly rentals can be a very lucrative business. But how much profit can you make off weekly rentals? Well, it depends on several factors.
Generally, investing in short-term rentals tends to earn more revenue than investing in monthly rentals. However, many vacation rental owners feel like they aren’t getting the revenue they anticipated. Fortunately, it is possible to significantly improve your profit with renting out on a weekly basis.
However, it doesn’t come easy. It takes a lot of creativity, hard work, and sacrifice to grow your revenue. If you are looking to invest in weekly rentals, follow these 8 tips to maximize your profit.
1. Find a Profitable Location
If you want to maximize your profit with weekly rentals, the first and most important thing you should do is buy a house for rent or duplex for rent in a profitable location. Location is the most important factor when it comes to real estate investing. A good market for weekly townhouses for rent, condos for rent, apartments rentals, or even cabin rentals is one near popular tourist attractions and with good amenities like restaurants, gyms, and shopping centers. For instance, beach house rentals tend to enjoy a strong demand from tourists, especially in the summer season. Similarly, rentals homes located in ski resorts are very popular – and profitable – during the winter vacations.
You should also consider the local regulations regarding short-term rental properties as they may have a huge impact on potential profit. Not to mention that Airbnb hosts much do everything necessary to avoid legal problems with the local authorities.
Moreover, it’s important that you look at the numbers when searching for a profitable location to invest in Airbnbs. Mashvisor helps real estate investors easily find top location for buying an Airbnb property in the US housing market. For a city-level analysis, you can simply check Mashvisor’s real estate blogs for city-level Airbnb data.
Related: 8 Best Cities for Airbnb Investment in 2021
Mashvisor’s Heatmap: Average Airbnb Occupancy Rate by Neighborhood
With Mashvisor’s real estate heatmap, you can locate the best-performing neighborhoods in any US city in terms of the average property price, Airbnb rental income, Airbnb occupancy rate, and Airbnb cash on cash return. With this tool, you’ll be able to easily find areas with cheap apartments for rent and a good rate of return.
Related: Buy the Best Airbnb Income Properties With Heat Map Analysis
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2. Make Your Listing as Attractive as Possible
Many Airbnb hosts don’t earn as much as they potentially can because they have poorly set up their listing profile. This may include using photos that have been taken from the wrong angles and with poor lighting, long boring titles, and badly written listing descriptions. If you want to maximize your rate of return with weekly rentals, make sure you have the best Airbnb listing profile you can have. Your Airbnb profile should be attractive enough to lure in guests.
Therefore, ensure you use professional photographs when listing your rent house on Airbnb or other vacation rental sites. Your listing description should also be straightforward and well-formatted. One easy way to have an attractive profile is to learn from your competitors’ listings that are doing exceptionally well.
3. Use Dynamic Pricing
Another great way to maximize your profit with weekly rentals is to use dynamic pricing. Keep in mind that if you charge too much, you may end up missing on potential Airbnb guests and having a high vacancy rate. On the other hand, if you charge too little, you will miss out on potential Airbnb income. To figure out the right price to charge for your rental homes, you need to consider what other properties rented out on a weekly basis in the area are charging as well as seasonality and special events that bring more visitors to the area. Basically, you should optimize your rental rate based on booking trends.
Fortunately, there are third-party pricing tools that real estate investors can use to automatically set the ideal pricing to maximize their profits.
4. List Your Weekly Rentals on Multiple Booking Platforms
When it comes to investing in vacation home rentals, Airbnb is by far the most popular platform. Therefore, listing your apartment for rent on Airbnb is a great way to get bookings. However, if you want to increase your occupancy rate and thus your return on investment, you should consider also listing your property on alternative platforms like HomeAway, Vrbo, Bookings.com, etc.
Nevertheless, listing your rental on multiple platforms demands more management work on your part to avoid double bookings. You may need to use vacation rental management tools which can be costly. So you should consider the balance and evaluate whether listing on a new short-term rental platforms will boost your cash flow.
5. Hire a Professional Airbnb Cleaning Company
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, guests are now even more conscious than ever of cleanliness and sanitation when picking weekly rentals. Most of them are actually willing to pay more to get vacation rentals that surpass cleaning standards. Therefore, if you want to maximize your profit with rental houses, ensure that your cleaning is up to scratch. You may need to get a professional Airbnb cleaning service to ensure that the place is adequately cleaned.
Alternatively, hiring an Airbnb management company will turn your houses for rent into a source of passive income while also enhancing your profitability potential. This will take care not only of the cleaning needs of your weekly rental property but all other aspects of owning and managing an Airbnb investment property.
6. Add Amenities That Cater to Your Guests Needs
If you want to maximize your profit for weekly rentals, you should consider adding more amenities to set apart your houses for rent from the rest. Every amenity you add will give you an edge over your competitors and increase your profits. However, be sure to tailor your amenities to your audience. This means that you should pay attention to the type of Airbnb guests that frequent your weekly rentals in the area and understand their needs. This way, you can add amenities that cater to their needs. For instance, having a dedicated working station can help you get more bookings from business travelers.
Related: The Airbnb Occupancy Rate Formula- What It Is and How to Use It
7. Offer Additional Services with Your Weekly Rentals
Airbnb rental income is not the only possible source of income for properties for rent by owner. As a host, you can earn an extra income and maximize your profit by offering additional services to your guests at a fee. For instance, you can offer laundry services, cooked meals, pick-up and drop-off, guided tours, bicycle hire, restaurant recommendations, and many more. Apart from increasing your gross income, offering additional services will give your listing a good image and bring better reviews which will make getting future bookings easier.
8. Provide Good Customer Service
If you want to get more positive Airbnb reviews, have higher rankings, and increase your bookings, you should provide your Airbnb guests with the best possible experience. This comes down to how you treat your guests and respond to their inquiries. You should quickly and professionally respond to any questions or requests from your guests and apologize for any reported issues. However, just apologizing isn’t enough. You should also make sure any problems are resolved as fast as possible.
The Bottom Line
Investing in weekly rentals can be very profitable if you know the strategies you need to apply to maximize your return on investment. That’s why you need these 8 Airbnb tips to get started on the right foot. The first step is to buy a top-performing investment property in one of the best locations for this strategy. To do this, sign up for Mashvisor now to start searching through hundreds of thousands of rental properties for sale across the US.
