Week Bye Week

Here’s a pivot for you: Instead of BECOMING renters, we are hosting renters. It’s a big pivot, but given the circumstances, one that made sense.

Let us explain.

Currently our area appears to be more of a buyer’s market, so we’ve decided to stick it out for a little while until we see the balance shift a little bit more our way.

However, our original issue with this house remains – it is just too much house for three people – soon to be two people! – to live in. We are paying for much more square footage than we need. Since we aren’t selling yet, we still have a mortgage payment. Our financial plans long term don’t include a mortgage, so every month that we make this payment is a month that we aren’t putting that money toward our future.

When Kansas City was announced as a World Cup city, the buzz around short term rentals took off and we realized that we have a tailor-made opportunity for a little side hustle. Our house layout actually lends itself perfectly to short term rentals. Our basement is set up like an apartment with its own driveway, garage, separate entrance, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchenette. There is even a small patio with a bistro table and a barbecue grill.

Short term rental solves two issues for us. First, it makes use of some extra space. Second, the income offsets some (and sometimes all) of our mortgage payment each month.

How does this work?

We take our guests lead on interaction, but for the most part they don’t have to interact with us in person at all if they choose not to (and most choose not to). They use a code to open and close the garage door electronically so they can come and go as they please and have full run of the basement apartment.

We’ve had a few tenants so far, all of whom have been great and treated the apartment well. We now have a nice collection of 5-star reviews under our belt as well.

The original plan was to rent for the World Cup (and we do have quite a few people in town for games), but it has been going so well that we plan to keep going for a while. We are not sure if this will be something we continue long term (until we sell) or not. We’ve offered the kid use of the apartment for college (she will likely decline) and our HOA is considering a bylaws change to ban short term rentals (more to come on that later), so the future is up in the air. But that’s the norm for our lives these days. We live in uncertainty!