Spent a bunch of time yesterday arranging an AirBnB for my parents, who are coming to LA for six weeks this spring.
What does this have to do with a multifamily blog? A lot.
The pricing for stand-alone, decent 1/1 – 2/1 houses is in Silver Lake is basically $3500-4000 / month.
That compares with the $3000-3500 you’d probably get as a more traditional rental.
For a single unit, the additional management costs and time associated with running AirBnB probably aren’t worth it.
But, if you can use the same people / systems to run a small portfolio of these things, it probably is.
At this point, if I owned a 2-4 unit building in a good part of Silver Lake, I think I’d experiment with running the whole thing AirBnB.
Even with some vacancy and the additional costs of management, I think you might do better financially.
(Incidentally, if you dislike the idea of removing rental units from the market in favor of AirBnb, then you ought to support the development of more hotel rooms in Silver Lake!).