What I learned from listing my guest room on Airbnb

It’s 9 p.m. on a Tuesday and a stranger from Shanghai is cooking in my kitchen. I don’t speak Chinese and she doesn’t speak much English, so we both had to mime when she asked me where I kept the knives and salt.

I’d only met this woman 24 hours earlier, but she’s staying at my house for another four days – and it’s all thanks to an advert on the London Underground.

“Turn your guest room into money with Airbnb!” I promise. Well, I’m lucky enough to have a spare room and never seem to have enough money (due to a litany of mounting bills and the desire for the occasional vacation), so could this be the answer?

I forced my husband to spend a weekend cleaning our top floor bedroom and soon I was photographing, artfully framing different corners of the space to try to show it (not helped by my cat, who refused to move aside ) .

After downloading the app and signing up, I was matched with an Airbnb Superhost who gave me advice and offered help throughout my first booking. He said that instead of offering an introductory discount, as the app encouraged, the best way to generate business was to research the price of local listings and then undercut it. Once I had accumulated a few reviews (I was aiming for five stars), I could then increase my prices.

My neighbors were listed at £40-55 a night, so I hedged my bets and started at £35, with a £10 cleaning fee. Within 24 hours I had my first reservation. A young Border Force officer was undergoing training at Heathrow and needed accommodation. We gave him a set of keys, told him to make himself at home and five days later we were £117 better off.

After several months of hosting (and – not to brag – ten five-star reviews), we are now almost fully booked at all times.

Tips for Smooth Sailing and Greeting Strangers

I have a pretty good weird radar, and when it comes to letting people into your home, it pays to trust your instincts – I’ve turned down bookings simply because I had bad vibes.

The guy who wanted to rent my room from 9am to 3pm to “meet a friend from London”? No.

The man who wanted to stay three months? Not for me.

A young man who promised to pay me in cash when I arrived? Thanks but, no thanks.

(You’ll notice a common theme with these: since I often work alone at home during the day, I don’t take any chances).

Touch wood, everyone who has arrived was friendly, polite and, most importantly, didn’t smear feces on the walls, try to remove the sink or tell any other Airbnb horror stories.

Read more on the Sky News Money blog here

How to get good grades

Did I mention we have five stars? I don’t think there’s any real secret to getting a good grade, but I tried to think about what I would want when I walked into someone’s home. Make sure you have high-quality photos that actually match the look of the room; don’t go crazy with the filters.

We always make sure the place is clean, well presented and clutter free. Thoughtful touches like a TV with Sky Box, a box of toiletries and a coffee machine are also very useful.

I’m also very upfront about the fact that we have pets – the last thing I want is for someone with allergies to book (and give me two stars!), so Louie is at the forefront of the list.

Traps to avoid

After the success of Airbnb, I decided to take it a step further and list our room on Booking.com. Their management platform is cumbersome, difficult to use and you can’t control who books – they book instantly and that’s it, you’re stuck with them. It’s also a bit complicated to check both platforms to make sure you don’t accidentally double-book. But it generates a lot more bookings for us than Airbnb.

As annoying as it may seem, you also need to consider the tax implications. The good news is that Airbnb isn’t taxed like Vinted or eBay (who get a tax-free allowance of £1,000).

If you rent a furnished room in your main residence (i.e. not a secondary residence), you can claim Relief for renting a room. The threshold for this is £7,500 per year (or half if you split the income with your partner). The tax exemption is automatic, meaning that if your income is below this amount, you don’t need to do anything – but if your income is above this amount, you will need to file a tax return. Given we earn around £350 a month from our room, we’ll fall well below that figure.

The rules will be different if you’re renting an entire house that you don’t also live in, and you must also notify your home insurance company of the change.

I convinced my mother to list her spare room on the platform, and she had decent success too (excuse the girls who threw up in her bin during Cheltenham race week and the woman who dropped one star because she forgot to put a towel in the bathroom). I then convinced my brother’s girlfriend to give it a try.

Learn more:
Vacation Money: Where to Buy It and What Not to Do
The most common scams during the holidays

I made a pretty big mistake though: I forgot to have them sign up using my host referral code. You can earn up to £268 for each host you refer, which means I lost a pretty significant chunk of change. I then forgot to recommend them again when they moved to Booking.com and therefore missed out on hundreds of commission-free bookings through their program. I try not to think about it too much…

Overall, I’ve loved using Airbnb: in just over two months we converted our spare bedroom into over £700. And as much as I’d love to live in a world where we could afford our daily expenses without flogging our guest room like a cheap roadside motel, that’s where we are.

If you have the room, good radar to screen people, and are open to intrusion into your personal space, this might also be a good fit for you.

Contact me first to get a referral code. (Note to editor: just kidding).