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Comment by cowllin | Hacker News Reader

One of the few here it seems who is actually an Airbnb host (a Superhost actually).

For three years, I've managed my grandma's home in Wisconsin as a way to generate income for her and allow the house to stay in the family. It has been our vacation home for four generations and we certainly would have sold it by now if not for Airbnb income during the months of June, August, September each year.

I am trying to earn enough to buy the home and then will continue Airbnb'ing (keeping July for family time) to pay much of the mortgage.

Just an anecdote admittedly, but hopefully one demonstrating that not all hosts are evil landlords, and I would not be surprised if some of our (repeat) annual guests were interested in sending us a card/support because of the relationships we've worked to build and maintain with them.

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I can't really understand how you see yourself as 'good' in these circumstances?

Look at it from another perspective. You've got a property sitting empty for most of the year, driving up property values, so you can have a holiday on e a year.

You're making poor use of that property, and you want people to give you money, even though you could sell it? You need Zero help, you are not in a position of needing food, your children hungry, or being kicked out of your home. You create no, or at least negligible, employment for others.

You essentially think people would want to give you money so you can go on holiday next July?

Mostly fair points, but figured I'd clarify a bit.

"You've got a property sitting empty for most of the year, driving up property values, so you can have a jolly holiday."

My grandmother (the homeowner) lives there more than 6 months each year. She spends the rest of her time in a retirement community.

It's a town with <500 people that swells 10x during summer months, there is very low demand besides vacation homes due to lack of nearby schools, healthcare, etc.

We have two maintenance people and one cleaner from the local community that we partner with; it is extremely common to have these "old school" side gigs up there as it is such a vacation-driven community.

Yeah, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle, although here in the UK those sort of holiday homes have become a real blight on our rural communities.

If you want to be super transactional about it, people who like staying at that house over the summer should give him money so that he doesn't sell the house and they can visit again in the future.

If you want to be not super transactional about it, people who having relationships with other people sometimes just help each other out to be nice, and are rewarded for it with reciprocal kindness in the future.

If you have strong relationships with regular annual guests, why bother going through airbnb versus dealing with them directly?

Consolidated platform makes many things easier: guidebook, "welcome to the home" onboarding, auto-remit of state taxes, ability to fill empty weeks, etc.

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