I’m currently 23 and have been living at home with my parents since I graduated college about 15 months ago. I’ve had a nice job in IT consulting the whole time and they don’t charge me rent and I don’t have a car, so I’ve been saving 75-80% of my pay after taxes
Since I’m in the consulting industry, I travel Monday-Thursday most weeks (leaving Monday morning at the crack of dawn and returning Thursday late) and only spend Thursday-Sunday nights at home. And I spend every other weekend traveling to see my girlfriend. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to pay rent on a place that I won’t be staying in for most of the week, so living at home has been working out well. Still though, it will be time to fly the coop within the next year.
I live in the Chicago suburbs right now in a very affluent neighborhood, and when I move out I want to move to the city of Chicago. Whenever I run the numbers, it’s really a tough pill to swallow that I’ll have to start dumping so much money in to rent, especially for what will effectively be a lifestyle deflation. I had a thought though: what if I tried to rent my apartment out via AirBnB on the nights that I’m not there? It seems to me that it would be prime time for business travelers to be staying, especially if the apartment was in close proximity to the Loop.
This extra income could enable me to rent a nicer apartment than I could otherwise afford, but that would be risky because there’s no guarantee of income from AirBnB renters. Similarly, I was thinking that maybe I could buy a condo downtown, but then I’m on the hook for 30 year of payments, and who knows how long until AirBnB is regulated to death. Also, I realize that it’s pretty anti-Mustachian to attempt to buy a bigger place that is absolutely necessary. But what if I buy a condo with and extra bedroom, AirBnB it, and keep the condo for a number of years as a rental property if I decide to move? Has anyone else had reliable success with AirBnB? I think it’s probably a bad idea to buy something above my means by relying on such an unreliable source of income? Is the time commitment to clean and prep the place even worth the extra income? Would that time be better spent in some other sort of potentially-money-making side venture? When it comes time to look for apartments, should I try to strategize for rentability, or should I just rent what is best for me and if I can rent it out during the week, that’s just gravy on top?
switch2richnow 