At the time this post was written, we were just a couple of weeks away from Christmas 2022. People planning to travel for the holidays were busy working their phones and web browsers in search of accommodations. Those hoping to find rental homes usually found themselves out of luck. That’s because rental homes book months in advance. This suggests a question: should you rent out your home over the holidays?
You might be one of those people who travel every year. You visit family in another state, leaving your home unoccupied for several weeks. What if you could make a little money by renting it out?
The potential is there. According to data cited by the home security experts at Vivint Smart Home, the New Year’s holiday is the most robust time of the year for residential home rentals. Nearly 72% of all home rentals occur over the New Year’s holiday. Christmas comes at 40%.
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A Home Is More Comfortable
If you stop and think about it, home rentals make a lot of sense during the holidays. People traveling to visit family for Christmas and New Year tend to stay for a week or two. Longer stays are doable in hotel rooms, but homes tend to be more comfortable. Renting an entire home gives a family the room to spread out. It offers access to a lot of amenities you will not find in hotel rooms.
The other thing to consider is holiday vacation travel. You have people who spend the annual holiday season visiting popular tourist destinations rather than relatives in another state. You are talking ski resorts in Utah, theme parks in Florida, and oceanfront locations in the Carolinas. These are all places where rental homes do very well.
There Are Some Trade-Offs
Home rentals can go for thousands of dollars during the busy holiday season. Just renting your home for two or three weeks could put a nice chunk of change in your pocket. But there are trade-offs. At the top of the list is the reality that renters have a reputation for not treating vacation properties as well as they treat their own homes.
Just one family renting your home for two weeks could do quite a bit of damage. Are you prepared for that? Are you prepared to return home and find stains on the carpet and broken patio furniture? Are you prepared to open your next utility bill only to find that it is much higher than normal?
Making Renting Easier
Assuming you are willing to live with some of the downsides of renting, there are ways to make doing so easier. For example, replacing the traditional keyed locks on your first-floor doors with smart locks eliminates the need to produce and distribute extra keys. A smart lock is a keyless lock that offers access through a numerical code and a keypad.
You create a unique access code for your renters. Once their stay has ended and they return home, you change the code. It is quick, and easy, and eliminates the security risks associated with distributing physical keys.
Smart home devices can make your home safer and more efficient as well. For example, installing motion-sensitive lighting and a programmable thermostat can translate into significant energy savings by making up for careless renter habits.
There is more this post could talk about that space will not allow. In the end, the question is whether you should rent your home during the busy holiday season. Renting is a good way to make some extra money. However, there are risks you need to be willing to take.