airbnb – Better BenJamin

March 2, 2021

Use Your Phone To Take Amazing Airbnb Listing Photos

Professional real-estate photos will always give you a leg up in your Airbnb listing. Airbnb boasts that professional photos can increase earnings by 40%, increase bookings by 24%, and lead to higher nightly price of 26% (according to a 2016 study done by Airbnb). Airbnb even offers professional photographers for some cities… unfortunately, not Pittsburgh. Luckily phone cameras these days are getting better and better and you can take some excellent listing photos with your phone using a few tips.

December 28, 2020December 28, 2020

A Basement Renovation Turned Airbnb: Before and After Pictures

This little project has been quite the adventure. Here are the complete before and after side-by-sides. For those who have followed our journey as it happened, this is a tidy little recap. For those HGTV junkies who are just joining… this should scratch the itch. Nothing like skipping to the end of the episode for the before/after shots 😉

This is the vantage point when you first enter the Airbnb. A nice soft bed to welcome you.

December 28, 2020

We did it! Check out our Airbnb Posting

We posted our space in August and have already hosted over 100 guests! We also managed to achieve the coveted Superhost status! Check out our airbnb posting here. Stay posted for more insight into our hosting and airbnb experience.

December 18, 2019January 22, 2020

Euclid Street Airbnb Reno Weeks 10 & 11

Oh whoa is the floor. Dramatic, surely?… I say….barely. Herein lies the problem: Lauren wants a bamboo floor. I am stubborn and so is the house. We spent a lot of time staring at a floor postulating potential quick fix solutions, all leading to a lot of work and potentially a failed state of a floor. It turns out a smooth floor does not mean a level floor and a level floor does not mean there aren’t waves. We have a deceptively smooth, un-level and wavy floor. The best kind….. for carpet. Fifteen people have told me to carpet it. I reaaallly don’t want to do this. I do not think carpet is a good solution for longevity with short term renting and I’m just not ready to concede.

October 29, 2019October 29, 2019

Euclid Street Airbnb Week 4: Bathroom Tile and a Million Small Jobs

Woof week 4 and we are definitely starting to feel the pain. Its never easy to feel like you keep adding to the list faster than you can cross it off. I feel like I live at home depot. This week kind of felt like we were running on a treadmill. We had every intention of going somewhere, and it sure felt like we ran a marathon, but we looked up and found ourselves in the same place that we started. Our turning point was getting most of the wall tile in the bathroom. This was a huge morale boost for us. Finally something going up, not coming down! The gleaming white tiles made a huge difference in the feel of the tiny bathroom. No more dingy Pittsburgh Toilet (For those of you aren’t yinzers, a Pittsburgh toilet it just a toilet and sink just chillin’ wide open in the basement so that people coming in from the steel mills and mines could clean up without getting the house dirty). It does feel like we are rounding a corner, hopefully next week will start to really show the end result.