How to Sell Your Airbnb Vacation Rental for Top Dollar
Of our four properties, three of them were existing vacation rentals that were listing on Airbnb and Vrbo. Because the homes were already short term vacation rentals, purchasing them was significantly less risky than if they were not. You could read reviews of the homes on Airbnb and more importantly you had a record of their historical pricing and occupancy. You could plug in the exact numbers from the prior owner and get a good idea of your base case scenario with the home.
However, real estate agents and listing websites don’t really make it easy to showcase this information in a way that is accessible to vacation rental investors. Normally you have to email the agent, they need to email the owner, the owner needs to dig around and find the financial information.
So here are some tips for selling an Airbnb or vacation rental.
In the real estate listing, include the link to the Airbnb listing (or the house name or ID) as well as the number of reviews and average rating. If you mention the house has 325 reviews and a 4.98 star rating, people will be excited this is an amazing place. Put it in the real estate listing
Have your Occupancy, Pricing and Revenue information ready. If you’re just on one platform like Airbnb or Vrbo, it’s easy to download the information into an Excel spreadsheet or the “Proof of Earnings” PDF. This information is invaluable for investors and will help you get better pricing if you sell your home. Bonus points if you mention the annual Gross Income in the MLS listing.
Optional. Have your costs itemizing. It’s great if you have a spreadsheet of all your monthly costs like utilities, property management, HOA etc on a spreadsheet for a potential buyer.
Insurance. In your packet of information, include who the current insurance provider is and what the annual premium is. This can help an out of state investor figure out the insurance quickly. Bonus points if you have quotes from Short Term Rental homeowners insurance providers already.
Short term rental license. This is the key thing. Have the short term rental license documented in your packet and steps about how the buyer and transfer it or acquire their own.
The cashflow from Airbnb rentals tends to be significantly higher than long term rentals, so you should be able to sell your home for a lot more if it’s properly documented. Unfortunately, almost no one has this information ready to go when selling their house. Every real estate agent that’s selling an Airbnb short term rental should create a packet with this information.