Rental vs Vacation Rental | Exploring ADU Options
January 18, 2020
Rental vs Vacation Rental | Exploring ADU Options
Straw Bale Air BnB, originally built as a custom home, now available to stay in and experience!
The purpose of the City of Boise’s favorable accommodations to Additional Dwelling Units (ADUs) is to increase housing density and address the local housing crisis. We are in dire need of rental opportunities, both for local residents and for newcomers.
Over the past many years homeowners have experienced rising home equity, but if they love our city and want to remain, options for what to do with that surplus are limited. ADUs provide homeowners a way to do more with the space they’re living in, either to provide housing for their own changing family needs or to generate another source of income.
In 2019 Boise City council voted unanimously to ease up on restrictions for ADUs, making the following changes:
Maximum number of bedrooms increased from one to two.
Maximum size of entire unit increased from 600 square feet to 700 square feet.
A dedicated parking spot for one-bedroom units is no longer required.
Some local residents expressed concerns about people using this opportunity to create more vacation rentals through Air BnB or VRBO, arguing that these don’t do much to build community, however they do contribute to the local tourism economy.
According to AirBNB.com the average income from an Air BNB in Boise is about $1,009, on the surface level. Plugging in the data on the site (from the tenant/guest perspective) for a 2 bedroom home provides about twice that amount for a monthly rental. The Boise-wide average includes rooms for rent as well as independent dwellings. Running a successful vacation rental requires constant care, promotion and customer service that extends to the website’s social networking aspect. Visitors and hosts can rate one another, creating more accountability overall, but for some homeowners this might be more work than it’s worth.
On the other hand, Air BnB provides a $1,000,000 insurance policy (to cover guest damages) that homeowners may not typically get without paying a premium. The contract for a tenant is with Air BnB and if a property owner isn’t happy with their guest, all they have to do is contact the company to end the stay. This is a much faster process than ever having to undergo negotiations with a tenant.
Compare $1,885/mo for one local 2 bedroom house on Air BnB, to the average $1,422/mo for a 2 bedroom rental (for all housing types). Once a lease is established with tenants, property responsibility remains—including maintenance, taxes, fees, and potentially covering damages. Once a tenant agreement is established, a family is housed. This could be less of a demand on the primary home owner than making sure the dwelling itself can withstand local competition, maintaining interior dwelling standards that include furnishing and cleaning the home.
Either way, EarthCraft is here to help you design/build an awesome ADU!
We utilize passive solar, making the most of our average 210 days of sunlight per year here. If your property is shaded our energy efficient home designs still work well to increase your savings and speed the return on your home building investment. We can design/build a 700 sq ft straw bale home with a loft that insulates for warmth in the winter and cool in the summer. For rental situations, this also means NOISE insulation! The city has even allowed us to measure the footage from inside the bales, meaning you will get the full 700 sq ft of floor space, and all the benefits of straw bale insulation.
