Playbook # 003: Airbnb Rental Arbitrage
🖼️ The Big Picture
What if you could generate passive income from Airbnb rentals, without buying or owning a single property?
Most people think investing with Airbnb means buying a home and then renting it out on a short-term basis using Airbnb as the marketplace to advertise and collect fees.
But there's another way to invest using Airbnb that doesn't require owning a home. Instead, you use arbitrage.
Let’s start with the concept of “arbitrage.” It's a fancy word that simply means to buy something on one market and sell it on another market for a higher price.
This is similar to a “sandwich” leasing strategy, where you’re essentially a middle man for the property, making the spread between what you pay for rent and what you can sublet it out for to someone else.
Here’s how Airbnb arbitrage works in a nutshell:
- You rent or lease a house from a homeowner for market rent (or even a little above market rent.)
- You list it on Airbnb and automate all of the management of it.*
- You make the spread on the profits.
*Please note that you are doing this with the landlord fully on board. More on that part below.
It can be a great way to get into the real estate business with very little money in the game. And the short-term rental industry is expected to fully recover from the pandemic impact by the end of 2021.