Renting your home to make ends meet seems like the perfect idea. But for this social media regular, the adventure left a bitter taste. Between expectations and reality, she shares the reasons for her disappointment to help those who are still hesitant to take the plunge.
When you’re looking to repay your loan or real estate purchase costs, you immediately think of renting on Airbnb. It’s so widespread. Moreover, as soon as you type in “earn money by renting on Airbnb”, you come across several pages of advice, articles and even videos on how to cover your costs. It seems very simple and that’s exactly what influencer Delphine Desneige, aka Deedee, thought.
She left the Paris region to become the owner of a house near Toulon. With her husband, they took charge of all the renovations and even got their hands on the trowel in order to reduce expenses. She wanted to try to earn money by renting out her property on the famous platform. “Airbnb is profitable”she had said to herself. And it is, but there’s something else she hadn’t expected. Even if she had prepared her house well for future occupants. “I bought boxes, emptied cupboards, filled suitcases, stored in the attic, pimped, cleaned, lightened, refined, in short, I made a clean room.”
And unfortunately upon her return, she had several unpleasant surprises: “The garden was not watered, ¾ of the plants gave up the ghost, there was a bit of breakage or undeclared disappearance, mountains of undiscarded and unsorted trash, a swimming pool which was probably used as a bathtub when returning from the beach if I believe the kilos of sand found at the bottom of the water, the sun cream which had blackened the covering and two stained pool mattresses ready to be thrown away.” Even if she recognizes that the tenants, during the exchanges, were “cordial, even friendly” and that they generally respected the instructions she had left.
If she thinks everything went well, she’s not ready to do it again and that’s why. “I hated this experience. What I really didn’t like was this rental mentality: you pay, so you do what you want. Someone will come behind us to clean, throw away the trash, replace broken glasses, balec!” Particularly bitter, she explains that she put all her savings, all her dreams into this house. Delphine ends her story by explaining that when she rents accommodation, she pampers it even more than her own and that she understands the attitude of the occupants even less.
She would probably have been less disappointed if the property she was renting out was not hers, not the one where she lives all year round.
