A guide to buying an Airbnb property

Buying a space for the purposes of renting it out is an investment that should pay for itself and earn you profit down the line. We all know buying a house in New Zealand (especially Auckland) can be ridiculously expensive, so you need to weigh out the cost of buying the house and all the expenses that come with it compared to the profit you will make through the years. You definitely won’t see profits immediately. So what should you consider when buying a space to rent out?

Location location location

As Bnb Duck says, the first thing you should consider is the location of your Airbnb. The most popular locations will be in the heart of the city, a short walk/bus ride away from the city, or near a major attraction. It will also help your booking chances if your home is located near restaurants, a grocery store, and public transport, as many guests will not have a car to get around with. As Fancy Pants Homes suggest, you could even use a heat map analysis tool to see what are the most popular areas in your city/town.

The occupancy rate for your area

Bnb Duck also suggests you should work out the occupancy rate of the area you wish to buy in before you purchase a place here. To do this, you can go to the Airbnb website, search the town/city and select a listing that is in this area of interest. This will show you a booking box with an average cost per night and a space to enter the stay dates. Leave these blank, input the number of guests and then click ‘book.’ Now you can see what booking dates are available. Greyed-out boxes indicate a booking, and a bold number shows the unoccupied nights. Now for a rough idea of the occupancy rate of this Airbnb, you can multiply the monthly occupied nights by the price and then multiply this by 12 to work out how much this Airbnb would be making a year (minus expenses). This is a rough method, but it can be helpful when trying to work out how much you could potentially make from a property in a popular area.

Read your Airbnb laws and regulations

Fancy Pants Homes suggests that before buying a property, it is important you read the laws and Airbnb regulations for your location as these can vary from city to city. In some cities, you may need a license before starting to rent out your property. If you don’t listen to these laws, you could end up paying a hefty fine. You also need to read the Airbnb regulations, so you understand how this platform works and the associated expenses.

Additional expenses

According to Fancy Pants Homes, when buying a property to rent out, you need to keep in mind these additional expenses:

• Buying furniture/furnishings for your space
• Purchasing appliances such as TV/Netflix/cooking utensils
• Safety features such as smoke alarms, digital entry systems, and first aid kit
• Toiletries including towels, cleaning equipment, soap, toilet brush
• Pantry staple items
• Paying for Wifi/ electricity/ heating/ water
• Cleaning cost

Conclusion

I hope you all found this article very useful when considering whether or not you should buy an Airbnb property, and if so, what Airbnb property you should invest in.