This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Wendi Courtney, a resident of Prescott, Arizona, who's decided to convert her short-term rental to a long-term rental this fall.
I started renting the house in Prescott on Airbnb about four years ago. I originally bought it for $420,000 in 2018. There's a main house and a guest suite. The main house has one bedroom and one bathroom, with a covered front porch and an open back deck. It's about 1,400 square feet. The guest house is smaller, 40 feet away, and a third of the size. It's also a one-bedroom.
I thought, "Great, I'll live in the main house, and my mom can live in the guest house." And it wasn't six weeks later that she passed away.
At first, listing it as a short-term rental was just a way to not have to sell it.
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We're in the mountains. Downtown Prescott is the same elevation as Denver, so it can get cold. We run 15 to 20 degrees cooler than Phoenix. We're only about 90 miles away, so people from Phoenix come here to get out of the heat.
Everybody told me to start out cheap, get people in, and get some reviews. All you're looking for immediately is reviews. I started at $80 per night for the main house. Now it's up to $149 on weekdays and $169 on weekends. The guest house is $139 on weekends.
People love the main house because it's got great big log beams. It's a true log house.
The properties have been fairly well booked. I haven't really had any issues of not getting bookings. I have one couple staying in the guest suite now for all of July and August. I've got another couple in the main house for all of August.
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Ridiculous guest demands have stressed me out
There wasn't just one moment I decided to quit. It's not the elephants that get you — it's the gnats.
A lot of times you get people that probably should've stayed in a hotel. They expect more than what you can deliver out in the forest.
I had this one couple; I still laugh about it. She called and asked if it was all right to have people over for dinner. I said, "Well, yes, but where are you going to sit them?" The table in the guest suite is just a two-seater. And then all of a sudden she called again in a panic: "Oh, you don't have serving platters?" Who has serving platters in a 600-square-foot vacation rental?
Then the propane tank was out, so I told them to borrow the one from the main house, but they couldn't lift it. So I had to get someone to help them.
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I do a fair amount of traveling, and if someone calls me while I'm 1,400 miles away, it's like, what can I do? It's very frustrating.
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You need to respond to guests fairly quickly at all times. I usually do it within an hour.
Once, a couple went to bed and a bat was in the ceiling. They called in a panic, so I had to run over in the middle of the night and get the bat out of the house. I live about 30 minutes away.
Bats are protected; you can't just kill them. So I had to very gently scrape at it while it was hissing the whole time and take it out and put it on a tree stump, because apparently it can't fly from the ground. It was a whole ordeal.
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The guests had left the door open in one area. They were sitting outside with the lights on and the door open and didn't realize a bat flew in.
Another time, a guest messaged me asking if we use air fresheners. I was like, "Open the windows, and there's your fresh air."
Next thing I hear is that we've got mold. I was out of town, so I sent the cleaners over. They look under the sink, they look in the bathroom, they look in the hot-water heater — there's absolutely no mold anywhere in the house. The guest said, "Oh, I looked for all that stuff, but it's an invisible mold."
She actually went back to Airbnb and wanted compensation for her "invisible mold." I started looking this up, and apparently it's a scam that people do.
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On top of that, my cleaner said she left the place a disaster. She ripped a hole in the brand-new comforter. There were wadded-up wet washcloths in the cabinet above the toilet.
The people across the street clean for me. That has been a major blessing. They're the ones I call if I'm out of town. If I didn't have them, I probably would've shut it down a lot sooner.
I'm turning 62 this year and am ready to be done with the headaches
I made this decision in the spring. I left what was available still open through the summer. As of September 1, everything's blocked off. I've gotten several texts and phone calls from people who want to come back, but I've told them I'm done.
My grand total for August on Airbnb is going to be about $4,800. I'm thinking I can rent it for about $3,200 to a long-term tenant.
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June and July both brought in around $4,700. Utilities currently cost me $500, and cleaning runs me $600 a month.
I'm going to be 62 this year. I'm tired. I'm tired of paying the utilities. The house is free and clear; I'm not suffering a mortgage payment on it. But I just kind of looked at the costs of upkeep and just dealing with these people.
It's not all bad. I met some really wonderful people. One of my first guests rented the house for a month, then bought a house nearby and turned into one of my dearest friends.
My husband and I are actually going to move into the main house for a week or two with all the dogs at the end of the summer and enjoy it before it turns over to a long-term tenant.
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Then in the first part of September I'm going to do an estate sale and just get rid of everything I don't want. I'll clean the carpets and scrub everything up and put it out for a long-term tenant. I've already alerted property managers, and I'll put it in the MLS over the next couple of weeks.
