One of the hard parts of traveling is the home you leave behind. While you’re traveling, not only do you need to pay for your expenses to get around and see things, but you’re paying for everything back home. Rent doesn’t go away just because you’re not living there anymore. This makes traveling hard, and is one of the primary reasons most of us don’t do it that often.
A great way to fun your travels, or at least afford to pay your bills back home, is by renting out your apartment while you’re gone. If you don’t mind someone else living in your home for a few weeks or months while you live somewhere else, it’s a great way to pay the expenses without having to worry about losing your home. To that end, here are 5 tips to help you create a great guest room or entire apartment and start making travel a little easier.
Use Multiple Services
It’s easier than ever to rent out your apartment these days. There are plenty of sites that allow you to list your apartment or home, where others can browse for a place that suits their needs. Listing your place on one of these sites does most of the work for you – you just have to wait for someone to contact you.
However, you shouldn’t limit yourself to just one site. By placing your apartment on multiple sites, you give yourself a better chance at finding someone to live there. As long as you don’t book two different guests from different websites at the same time, you should have no trouble managing multiple accounts. It’s just a matter of staying organized and keeping your correspondences in order. Thinking of using an agent to advertise your property? Rentround lets landlords compare agent fees & services for free.
Provide Great Photos and Details
The best way to get people to stay in your apartment is by providing them plenty of information. As they’re browsing through possibilities, they want to know what they’re getting before they make a trip over to check out a place. A listing that has several well-lit photos will do a lot better than a listing that has only one photo.
Go into as much detail as you can about the place, listing all of the benefits. Is there a place to do laundry? Free internet? Are you close to a subway station or a local supermarket? Think about all of the reasons you like living there, then put them in each listing. Then take photos of the entire space, including the bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom and anywhere. The more details you provide, the more interest you’re like to get.
Set Reasonable Rates
Even if you create a great listing, you’ll have a hard time getting renters if you set the renting rate too high. A great thing you can do is search for other places to rent within your area, and price yourself close to those. Ideally, you’ll find someone who can take over all the bills while you’re away, but this may not always happen. You may need to charge less, considering the person renting will only be there for a few weeks or months. Get as much as you can, but if you find that you’re not getting any bites, consider lowering your rates.
Perform Background Checks
When renting, you don’t want just anyone living in your space. You should take the time to learn about your renter, and even conduct an interview if you can. Do they smoke? Do they have references they can give you? How is their rating on the listing site you’re using? The more you can learn about the person, the better decision you’ll want to make. It’s great to have someone paying your bills, but if you come back home to your apartment and everything is a mess – or worse, stolen – you’ll regret not checking them out.
Ensure a Happy Renter
Finally, if you plan on traveling often, you’ll likely need more than one renter over time. The best way to get future renters is by ensuring a good experience for each person who rents your space. After they leave, they’ll be able to give you a rating on the listing site, and future renters will use this when deciding if they want to rent from you.
There are plenty of ways to provide a good experience for your renters. For starters, always be available to answer any questions they may have. Another thing you can do is give your home a good cleaning before new guests arrive by using a service like https://amazoncleaning.net/. You can also do smaller things, like stocking up the fridge with some essentials so they don’t have to shop right away, or creating an instruction book on how to work the TV/computer.
Make Use of Your Space
Don’t let your empty apartment be a drag on your traveling ambitions. If you can find someone to rent out your space while you’re gone, traveling becomes a lot more affordable. Hopefully the above tips help you to do this, and before long you’ll be on the road with your apartment well taken care of.