2024 is in the books! The Brick Abode survived one year, well really 9 active months of guests but a year full of work towards the goal! Here’s a recap from 2024 with all the highs and the lows of our first year. You’re welcome to take this data and see if short term rental or Airbnb is good for you! Here we go!
2024 Income
The only source of income in 2024 was from reservations at the Airbnb. The active months were April until December and I was very happy with these active months! We had 149 nights booked out of 274 open days. Each stay average was 4.8 nights. This was very manageable for me and the cleaner to work. One thing that I’m going to track in 2025 is my blocked days. I have the 2 buffer days on for each stay because the cleaner has a day job and I want to make sure they have time to get to it. I do take the buffer day off if the cleaner knows they can make it on checkout day. Blocked days can really eat into availability so I want to see how many days I’m “losing”.
Taxes
I’m curious how my tax situation and the Airbnb will work. Airbnb did take taxes from the guests which amounted to $1,507 but no taxes were taken from me, the host. I’m curious how much I’ll owe in taxes for the income and how things like deductions will affect everything. I’m sure my accountant will have fun adding everything up!
2024 Expenses
2024 Credit Card Expenses
Renovations
The big expenses of the Airbnb came from renovations. We had 2 main jobs in the house. The smaller one was the kitchen renovation which cost $1,933. It included adding a dishwasher, adding a small corner cabinet, buying those supplies, and installation. You must have a dishwasher in an Airbnb!
The biggest renovation of the house was the bathroom renovation which also included replacing a shower door after some damage. The bathroom renovation cost $10,787. This was a start to finish reno. It included removal of the antiquated tub, redoing the sheet rock for a shower, tile, and new shower plumbing. Finally, it was 5 days of labor and prep as well as them buying the supplies. This was a truly hands off rebuild and it was priced as such.
We did have to fix the door after it shattered and it cost $832 for a new door, supplies, and labor for install. It sucked but we got it done between guests so no time was lost…except money!
The rest is reflected in the graphic above so you can see where the rest of the money went and day-to-day supplies in the “other” section. Outside of the bathroom damage, I think we kept it lean and only bought things we really needed to make the place a short-term rental.
2024 Checking Expenses
Utilities
The house’s utilities consist of electricity, natural gas, and water/sewer/trash. What more can you say except you’re gonna pay. The one thing we are planning is adding smart thermostat so we can manage the temperature better and to avoid extreme temperature settings. It will be nice to get some temperature and setting data to see how costs and settings intermingle.
Pay
The pay for cleaning cost $3,519. There are a couple ways Airbnb lets you pay your co-host and cleaner. The simplest is to have Airbnb send the payout to the main host. That’s the method I use. There are also percentage options or sending the cleaning fee directly to a co-host or cleaner.
I decided to take 100% of the payout and then I send an ACH transfer to my cleaner so I can track the payments for my accountant. I’m unsure what he’ll do but he wanted those amounts because he may send out a tax form for my independent contractor cleaner. We shall see how this works over the coming months.
The rest of the costs are extras from startup and paying some laborers with checks. There’s still a good mix of laborers in town that take checks verse credit cards. We also bought some used furniture items and they took cash or check for those items.
Conclusion
2024 is done! There’s still a few lingering question from last year that will be answered in the coming month about taxes and some other paperwork issues. We don’t do other GAAP tracking so the math is simple – cash in, cash out. It makes it easy and allows for an easy excel tracker. Onward to 2025 and more tracking!
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