• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Debt Free Climb

One Millennials journey from debt to debt free

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Blog
    • Intentional Decisions
    • Debt Freedom
    • Adventures
    • Side Hustles
  • My Student Loan Story
  • Adventures
  • Recommendations
  • Travel Hacking Consult

House Hack Update: My First Renters

February 2, 2019 by Gary

Twitter0
Facebook0
Google+0
Pinterest0
LinkedIn0

In my last house update post, I spoke about my plans for renting out the two additional bedrooms in my house. I treated January as an experimental month and listed my furnished room on Airbnb while I searched for full-time renters for February.

Let’s see January’s results and the next steps for February regarding my house hack.

Airbnb

At the beginning of the year, I quickly made a listing for our furnished spare room at the front of the house. I didn’t want to invest too much extra money into the room until we booked some guests and got their feedback. So I listed what I had set up already.

Mainly, I listed a room with a full-size bed, mini fridge, closet, nightstand and access to a private bathroom with a shower. I installed a front door keypad so I didn’t need to worry about keys and can delete their code once their stay is over. I thought was good enough to get started with Airbnb.

debt free climb house hack renters

Here is my listing in case your interested:  https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/30747315?s=51

I only listed the room as available for about half the month. I didn’t list the room the full month because we were out of town most weekends and wanted to be available and at home when a guest came. In the future, I will be more willing to let people stay over when I’m out of town once I have a little more experience under my belt.

Airbnb Results

My results are less than stellar, but I expected this while I am just starting.

I had four people initially book stays in January. However, one person canceled and I had to decline one because they tried to book their stay at 8 pm on the same night they were looking for a room.

So a total of 2 people came in January – which netted me a whopping $54.13 in earnings.

Airbnb Experience

Overall with my limited experience, I was pretty happy with how things went with the guests. I enjoyed meeting them and chatting about their travels. They both stayed one night each, and I barely noticed they were there. It felt like something I can do long term for sure.

The only issue is that I am pretty far away from meeting my house hacking goals with Airbnb right now. My house is a little north of Austin in the suburbs, and this causes me to lower my prices to where I would need to book out ~20 days of the month to get closer to my house hacking goals.

For now, I am going to keep the room listed on Airbnb when I don’t have a full-time roommate. I am focusing on improving the experience and trying to make the room available during big events in Austin like SXSW, Formula One,  and ACL music festival.

Full-Time Renters

Now some more exciting news. I got both spare rooms rented in my house starting on February 2nd!

That’s right, the renters signed the lease and paid first months rent/security deposit. I am using cozy.co to facility the rental agreement and payments.

The renter is my fiancee’s co-worker and her boyfriend. They are paying $1000 a month for both rooms plus utilities. I usually am charging $600 a room, but since they are getting both rooms, I gave a slight discount.

So my house hack situation is the following:

Mortgage (with PITI): $1738

Renters: $1000

Fiancee and I split: $738 ($369 per person)

Renting our spare rooms is a tremendous help in reducing my largest expense (housing). In January my fiancee paid $600, and I spent $1138 on our first mortgage payment. Now my fiancee decreased her housing costs by 38.5%, and I reduced my housing costs by 68%. The savings will help beef up my house emergency fund and help me increase my savings rate. The reduction of the expenses for my fiancee will help her make additional student loan payments (Debt Free Climb 2.0 coming when we get married next year).

Next Steps

We are hopeful that our roommate experience will be a positive one. So far the renters have been great in communicating, they are pretty minimalist, and have alternate schedules than us so they will be home more during the day and then come back later at night.

One thing to note is that their lease is a month to month lease and we are only expecting them here for a short period (less than three months). We knew this going in but thought it would be worth it short term. Once they give me their notice in writing, I will market the rooms back out. I am going to first list out the rooms on Travel Nurse Facebook groups and some other local Facebook groups I am a member of. If I don’t get any bites on quality renters than I will expand the search from there.

Before I accept anyone random into my house, I will conduct a credit and background check and thoroughly vet them beforehand. I feel fully prepared after taking the House Hacking Course.

Stay tuned for the next update!

 

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Gary

Gary is the author behind Debt Free Climb, a blog that shows how to live intentionally, pay off their debt, build a side income, and travel the world

Gary's favorite free financial tool he’s been using since 2017 to manage his net worth is Personal Capital. Each month he uses their free Investment Checkup tool and Retirement Planner to track his investments.


His favorite way to save automatically is Capital One Performance Saving, a bank that allows him to create multiple high-interest savings accounts and create an automatic savings plans for each account. He uses these features to meet short and long term savings goals.

His favorite way to save money on car insurance is by using Root, an app-based car insurance service. He saved $240 this year after switching from Geico to Root

Latest posts by Gary (see all)
  • Debtfreeclimb 2020 Update - October 23, 2020
  • DebtFreeClimb v2- Our Debt Freedom Progress Report - June 17, 2020
  • Trip Report: Our Honeymoon (not on a budget) - February 7, 2020

Filed Under: Intentional Decisions, Side Hustles Tagged With: Airbnb, House Hacking, roommates, Savings

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Amber says

    February 8, 2019 at 2:34 pm

    It’s great to hear about your experimenting with house hacking! That’s awesome you reduced your housing costs by so much. I look forward to hearing how things go.

    • Gary says

      February 10, 2019 at 10:50 pm

      Thanks, Amber! Its been a fun experience so far.

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe for the Free “7 Actions to Crush Your Debt” PDF!

Zion National Park DebtFreeClimb My name is Gary, I graduated college overwhelmed by my $55k in student loan debt. It took 3.5 years to climb out of debt and officially debt free in April 2017. I created DebtFreeClimb to share my story and help others in the process. I'm passionate about helping people live intentionally, pay off their debt, build a side income, and travel the world. Check out my full story Here

Student Loan Payoff Progress

My Wife’s Student Loan


Student Loan Paid: $32,500
Student Loan Total: $62,000
Remaining Balance: $29,500
Projected Payoff March 2021

Gary Student Loan


Student Loan Paid: $55,267
Student Loan Total: $55,267
Remaining Balance: $0
Paid off April 2017!

His & Her Money Podcast Interview!

DebtFreeClimb podcast

Financially Well Off Podcast Interview

The Mastermind Within Podcast Interview

debtfreeclimb

Popular Posts

  • Fincon Dallas Review Debt Free Climb My Fincon 2017 Review
  • Debt Free I’m Debt Free!! How I paid off Over $55k in Student Loan Debt in 3.5 Years!
  • Debt Free Climb House Hack Building My First House (Hack)
  • automate Simple Tips to Automate Your Finances
  • planning wedding 5 Things I Didn’t Expect When Planning for my Wedding
  • Earn Extra Side Income Earn Side Income to Attack Debt

Debt Free Blogs

Follow me on Twitter

Tweets by @@DebtFreeClimb

Footer

Like me on Facebook!

Debt Free Climb

Subscribe for the Free “7 Actions to Crush Your Debt” PDF!

Affiliate Disclosure

All Affiliate links will have an * next to the link. A link with a * indicates that I would receive a small compensation if you were to sign up or purchase the particular item or service mentioned in the link. All other links provided I gain no financial compensation from and are for informational purposes only. I only provide affiliate links for products and services I have personally used and have given me value. Please reference the Recommended page for more details.

Please contact me with any questions.

Copyright © 2023 · Genesis Sample on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in