So, there we were. We had just bought a house on a whim to run as an Airbnb. What were we thinking? Now what?! A month full of online shopping, staging and photographing and BOOM we were live! Within a short time of being up on the site, we had our first booking. It was thrilling, exciting and nerve-racking to say the least. Like most of the things we do, we dove in head first not knowing what we were doing but confident that we would learn a lot along the way and come out stronger for it.

AirBnb vs Traditional Rental

Running an AirBnb is much different than running a traditional rental. The latter is much more hands-off, let’s collect a check every month while with AirBnb, you are providing a service, including communicating with guests before, during and after their stay, providing and stocking supplies/linens and furnishing an entire place. We had already gotten our feet wet with running our Tempe property as a traditional rental, so it was time to try something new. Since I wasn’t back working my businesses yet with Clover still being so young, I took on the role of host, cleaner, designer, etc. It was a LOT of work to say the least. But the good thing is, if I was busy, that meant the AirBnb was busy! So, how did we do??

 

The Experience

I was a little skeptical about the whole thing. I mean, would this AirBnb thing really work? Was anyone going to want to stay in Gilbert?Also, anyone who knows me knows that cleaning is on my list of “things I dislike most” so turning over the AirBnb multiple times a month and a week, was not my favorite. BUT overall we loved it! I found joy in knowing that I was providing a beautiful space where our guests would make memories during their stay. All of our guests were so kind and had such wonderful things to say about the place, their experience, etc and it made it all worth it! Would we do it again? Well, clearly YES, considering we already have one up in running out of

our house and another to be built in the next few months (but more on that another time).

The Stats

December- 13 nights booked

January- 14 nights booked

February- 21 nights booked

March- 27 nights booked

April- 22 nights booked

May- 25 nights booked

Pretty good, right??

The Transition to Traditional Rental

So what happened after May? Well, in true Kokes form, we switched things up! We put in an offer on our current house in Agritopia in May and part of the conditions from the mortgage company is that we had to turn it into a traditional rental in order to close. It actually was great timing since summers in AZ really slow down as far as travelers go. Plus we knew that buying our new house meant 1 or 2 more AirBnbs in the works so we felt good about it. We now have a great family renting out the former “Jasper House AirBnb” and I’m quite ok with the “thanks for the check” every month situation!

Next time, I’ll share more about the forming of the By the Kokes brand, what we’ve done so far and what’s to come! Stay tuned, my friends.