Passive Airbnb: How to Make Money on Airbnb without Owning Property

 

If you’ve ever wanted to become an Airbnb host through passive airbnb, you might have had one major roadblock: you don’t own any property!

Did know you that you can still become a profitable Airbnb host without owning property? (Of course, you can still make money renting out a room or your entire place as an owner or lessee of a place.)

However, there’s a brand-new way to be an Airbnb host: Airbnb rental arbitrage. With Airbnb rental arbitrage, you could be closer to making money as an Airbnb host than you think.

Airbnb rental arbitrage is a new, growing way to create a passive income stream to help you reach your financial goals sooner than later. The great part about this strategy is that it doesn’t take too much money upfront.

If you think being an Airbnb host might be for you, then keep reading to find out everything you’ll need to know about Airbnb arbitrage.

What is Airbnb rental arbitrage?

Arbitrage is the act of buying and selling something at the same time to make a profit. The idea is to buy something at a low price and sell it at a higher price. The difference is the profit.

You may have seen this type of business in other online business models like Amazon retail arbitrage (FBA.) Arbitrage, as relates to Airbnb, also involves buying and selling for profit (if done correctly.)

Airbnb arbitrage is when you rent an apartment and then sublet it to Airbnb guests. The goal is to have the revenue from short-term rentals exceed the cost of renting, furnishing and managing the property. Here’s an example of how much you could earn in your area as an Airbnb host.

Many Airbnb hosts already rent an apartment or space and simply sublet an extra room to help them meet their rent obligations. Others use Airbnb hosting to offset the cost of an apartment they don’t use much due to travel or other life circumstances.

However, if you decide to rent an apartment or space for the sole purposes of being an Airbnb host, then there’s plenty of opportunity to make money.

For example, let’s say you can rent an apartment for around $1,500 a month. You may also rent furniture or buy furnishings to hosts guests. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say you are renting furniture for an extra $300 per month.

To make a profit with your rental arbitrage, you would need to earn more than $1,800 in Airbnb income each month. If you can rent out your unit at $100 a night (after the 3% service fee Airbnb charges hosts,) then you would need to have guests in the unit for 18 nights out of the month to break even. If you were able to have guests lease the apartment for 30 nights, then you would make $1,200 in profit.

If you will be paying someone to manage or clean the place, then you will need to deduct that from your costs as well. You’ll have to determine what amount of profit would make this effort worth your time.

The good news is that there are many markets and property types to explore so you can find out what works in the Airbnb rental arbitrage business. You could even invest in markets from out of town, so don’t think you are limited to one area.