UKC

My house has an annexe which I am considering air bnb ing.

Anyone have experience and/or advice for doing so?

In the Ennerdale Valley, handy for the best of the lakes crags. 

I have done Air bnb rental in the past.

Pros - It’s very easy to set up, you don’t need to handle your own bookings or chase people for money, I found it very effective and was pretty much fully booked within days of going live with my listing.  You don’t need to do your own marketing and advertising or have the skills to set up and maintain your own website.  There are none of the weird Tourist Boards things (marked down for non matching crockery etc).  

Cons - do not underestimate how much time it takes to clean and tidy between guests, especially laundry.  You need to be available to sort out problems all the time there are people staying and they will sometimes contact you at odd times with just about any question you can imagine.  This can be inconvenient, intrusive and sometimes expensive if something goes wrong.  Some guests can be demanding and occasionally some will leave a right mess and nick stuff.

Air bnb can be difficult to deal with if you end up in dispute with them (I did at the beginning of Covid as they tried to fine me for cancelling bookings when it was actually illegal for me to have guests).  Trying to find an actual human to contact was not easy.

I no longer do holiday lets but if I did, I’d be happy enough with Air bnb as a platform as long as nothing unexpected happens (such as sudden global pandemics).

Thanks, more of less what I expected. 

We use airb&b a lot. We have 6 apartments and gradually airb&b have become overwhelmingly our primary source of bookings. This is partly because of their relatively low fees but also partly because of their very flexible website and their fairness when it comes to resolving any issues or disputes. Compared to the likes of booking.com or holidayrentals.co.uk, which we used to use, they're a huge improvement.

But running 6 apartments is genuinely a full time job, so even one apartment will end up taking a considerable amount of what may be your limited free time, which is not to be underestimated.

Do you already pay council tax on the annex separately? If not the council might come knocking….

Technicalities are covered, thanks, I was asking for experience and advice. 

There are huge numbers of sites on the internet which give you loads and loads of help with how to airbnb effectively and profitably.

My 2 cents based on your post:

- You clientele are not going to be climbers (I live in a climbing paradise and I've not had an airbnb booking from a climber yet afaik in a year of bookings). So when setting up, try to get in the mindset of a typical lakes tourist (or even ask some of them or some of your friends/family who are more in the demographic who will be staying in your annex) and set it up so that demographic has everything they need. Depending on the size of your annex that might be families with young children (you need a cot and a highchair) or it might be couples (you need higher quality bedding, more cushions/pillows) for example.

- Do not go into this thinking it will be minimum work/time to administer, even if you decide to subecontract the cleaning, you will still spend a _lot_ more time than you expect to getting everything running smoothly in the first year at least.

- Think about cleaning fees, minimum booking lengths, length of season, cancellation policy and how your cost per night stacks up against local alternatives. All these things will impact how many bookings you get.

- Review rating is everything, without it your place will appear further down the list of results and potential guests will be put off booking with you. You need to be at the beck and call of your guests and respond quickly to any questions or problems (and give discounts in the case of the latter). If you are at work during the day and take 8 hours to get back to your guests when they couldn't get any hot water, that might well result in a lower review rating. Look into becoming a superhost - this boots your listing up the list of search results and if you can manage to fullfill all the superhost metrics and become one, it will be good.

- Take the time to properly fill out the entire list of information about your property after your listing goes live. There are hundreds of pieces of information you can input with checkboxes and fields (e.g. do you have a fridge? A freezer? What make/model are they? What kind of coffee making machine/jar/granules do you have?).

- Obviously make sure you have as killer a first photo as possible and plenty of other really nice ones, paying or persuading a friend who is a keen amaeteur/pro photographer to help you out with this is not a bad idea.

Ok, time to go out and enjoy this weather. Good luck!

Seems to me that advice is exactly what Taylor gave you, it just happened to be in the form of a question.

A friend lets out, they expected easy going outdoors families, they've had what turns out to be 4 lads just looking for somewhere remote to do drugs for a weekend(lots of paraphernalia left behind). Or families who normally package holiday to Costa whatever who become quite high maintenence, ie they are used to the tour rep saving them from thinking at all, guiding them every inch of the way, 3 or 4 phone calls a day what's the nearest petrol station, we are about to do lunch what cafe do you recommend...

OP- have the most elaborate welcome folder possible stating even the most obvious things, that even an average buffoon could Google in 2 seconds. 

I'm letting an apartment in the touristy town where I live and have decided to do it though a local agent. It's 20% but all the cleaning, booking, letting details keys etc  are handled through them and I don't have to be here when guests are. I think i'm happy with that. 

I've been lucky so far in terms of people staying, nobody leaving drug stuff around and nobody really causing any problems. And no really high-maintenance folk either, definitely a few who ask quite a few questions but it isn't continuous, more in a batch shortly after they book.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. Mine is only 20 pages but then there are laminated restaurant menus and local walks with map + description which take it up to 30. Definitely need to spend a few days putting together a good folder.

You can set up standard messages on airbnb which are very useful for saving time, so I have a standard welcome message (though I edit it slightly each time for the entry code and one other thing) and I have a standard message which just politely says "no pets, sorry" because despite the fact that the listings all have the no pets checked, I still get regular enquiries, every single time the dog is "small and well behaved", it makes me chuckle when I read the exact same message from many different people!

Because the OP is renting an annex to where they live, that will help a lot with getting problem folk because you will likely hear/see problems arising rather than arriving to see the aftermath.

I think it is also important to be personable, when you have had a friendly conversation with people, it is psychologically much harder for them to turn round and give you a negative review than if you didn't even meet them during your stay

The money collecting, booking, advertising, messaging system _all_ being provided by airbnb _is_ a massive plus, they even give you a measure of protection from people breaking things or leaving an almighty mess. And because they insist on proper documents to identify a person before they can register, it is pretty hard for someone to get away with serially going round wrecking places. I think I once turned someone down because I saw their reviews and was just like "erm, nope!".

I also agree with whoever said that airbnb can be less than great when it comes to you wanting something though... you can never really get through to a human human, only robot humans. In a company the size of airbnb everything is completely standardised and you will run into airbnb employees being completely unreasonable about something because they either unwilling to or forbidden from deviating from the stock actions and responses that seem to be to do with your particular enquiry/issue.

I'd be _extremely_ happy with that!

Do they manage to fill the place pretty much non-stop? Do they have short bookings as well as longer ones?

I think that if a service like that existed where I live, the company would sink without a trace under the weight of all the enquiries by people wanting to use them!

Certainly in the Dales the cottage rental companies charge more commission, plus everything is extra again, cleaning, contractor access, inspections, problem solving. Their commission only effectively buys advertising, bookings and key management. 

Yet to be tested but they say they expect c80% occupancy and manage several in the town balancing out demand between them. There's also  demand from media companies since we seem to have near constant filming hereabouts! It does mean however  I now join a locally vilified group of rentiers accused of driving up house prices/decreasing available accommodation  in the town 

We've been letting out our 2 bed annex for the past 3 years, most bookings come through Airbnb.  It's worked well for us, vast majority of guests have been very friendly and left the place clean and tidy, even the worst have just been a bit messy, no real horrors.   Ours sleeps a maximum of 4, anecdotal evidence from friends who also host through Airbnb is that larger groups lead to larger chance of problems.

Lots of good advice in messages above.  Our experience is that it isn't actually that time consuming, definitely the easiest money that we earn.  Our only real problem is heating, the annex is all electric, we let guests set the timer/thermostat, it's been normal for them to use £15/day of electricity in winter and with price cap increasing, we're planning for £25-£30 this winter.

Alternative listing sites - VRBO seem ok, we're on Tripadvisor but get very few bookings and were on booking.com but found them difficult to work with and delisted.

If you're going to put yourself on Airbnb, drop me a message and I'll send you a referral code.