Preparing to List: How Much Does It Cost to Thoughtfully Furnish a Vacation Rental?

Hello, and welcome to Snowball Rentals’ WeChat account, where you can read about recent developments in the US short-term rental market.

Anyone who has hosted a short-term rental knows: the better the house looks, the higher its rent.

A major misconception among Chinese homeowners is that, after spending so much to buy or renovate a house, they should economize wherever possible on furniture and interior design. We cannot blame them: earning money is hard, so much of our wealth has been accumulated through saving.

But when it comes to furnishing a vacation rental, this is a very poor decision.

Why? The days of effortless Airbnb earnings are over. Competition among vacation rentals is increasingly intense. If your property is unattractively furnished, the problem may not merely be earning less—it may not rent at all.

Based on our own experience furnishing 50 vacation rentals, spending more to make a property attractive is likely to recover the furnishing outlay in approximately 6–24 months.

Before answering how much it typically costs to furnish a vacation rental thoughtfully, let us consider the questions homeowners most often ask about furnishing.

Q: Should I hire a designer or furnish it myself?

A: Unless you are a designer yourself or have a particular interest in this area, hire a designer. The result and return on investment will be better.

Q: Should I buy used furniture or new?

A: The reason to buy used furniture is to save money. But in Seattle, we have encountered a problem: labor is so expensive that hiring workers and a truck to transport furniture makes the total not much cheaper than buying new.

Styles also end up mismatched and difficult to coordinate, because the selection is limited. After everything is purchased, the house may not look good, making a strong result difficult.

It also takes a great deal of time: communication, coordination and bargaining, sometimes followed by discovering scratches the seller had not disclosed when you arrive. All of this delays the rental's launch.

Overall, used furniture is therefore poor value. You save little, spend a lot of time and effort, and get a worse result.

Q: Is it better to buy furniture online or in physical stores?

A: In our purchasing experience, even heavily discounted clearance items in physical stores cost more than online. The selection is also much smaller, so after several years of experience, we now buy our furniture online.

Q: Which online furniture store is best?

A: Three years ago, it was Wayfair, a US website specializing in furniture. It also follows a marketplace model, with many furniture brands selling their products there.

But over the past year or two, Amazon has comprehensively overtaken Wayfair as our preferred online furniture retailer. Many furniture manufacturers sell on both Wayfair and Amazon, but Amazon's delivery is much faster.

There is also customer service: if furniture arrives missing a bag of screws or damaged, Amazon handles returns, exchanges and even refunds very quickly.

Q: Where can I find a handyman to assemble furniture?

A: If there is a lot to assemble, arrange two handymen a few days before the furniture is due to arrive. Pay hourly or agree a fixed assembly price. The workers we use regularly are movers, for whom moving and assembling furniture is easy.

Homeowners looking themselves can try finding renovation workers in WeChat groups—helpers at a basic laborer level—and agree the price. There are also often Mexican workers looking for casual jobs outside Home Depot, which you could try.

In short, it is difficult to find someone to assemble just one piece of furniture: the job is too small, and traveling there takes time, so quotes will not be low. For an entire house of furniture, it is generally easier to find a reasonably priced handyman.

Now let us discuss the expense everyone cares most about.

Furniture alone is not very expensive: approximately US$2,000–3,000 for a small studio, plus roughly US$2,000–3,000 per additional bedroom. Furniture for a four-bedroom detached house costs just over US$10,000.

But assembly labor, furnishing design, decorative items, plants, duvets and linens, kitchen utensils, cleaning and photography—

every item costs money.

Our experience is that doubling the furniture cost gives approximately the total required outlay.

A small studio or one-bedroom condo therefore costs around US$5,000–6,000.

Add around US$5,000 for each additional bedroom. A four-bedroom detached house costs a little over US$20,000. Our most expensive project was a very luxurious, approximately 5,000-square-foot house with higher-end furnishings; the total was a little over US$40,000.

As a homeowner, you may now be wondering: my home is quite good, but how much could it earn on Airbnb? Would it earn more than a long-term rental? Would it involve a lot of trouble?

Contact us right away! We will evaluate it for you free of charge.

If you:

Hope to increase rental income through short-term rentals;

Cannot spare a great deal of time to handle the small details;

Occasionally need to use the home yourself, making it unsuitable to empty out the furniture for a long-term rental;

Then:

Snowball Rentals’ management team is your best choice.

From pre-launch vacation-rental styling, big-data analysis and online marketing to tenant screening, dynamic pricing, customer service and sales, cleaning and repairs, Snowball Rentals provides everything as one complete service for your home.

This Week’s Booking Results

Through long-standing relationships with insurers, assignment companies and technology companies, Snowball Rentals rents homes for medium- and long-term durations at short-term rates, then gives owners a rebate of 5% in management fees to maximize their income.

Winter is the low season for Seattle’s short-term rental market, especially in 2023. Some recent large bookings, however, have been like a ray of sunshine, giving us high hopes for Airbnb’s performance this summer!

The detached house below, located in Renton, has an estimated long-term monthly rent of approximately $4571, which can be looked up on Redfin.

The owner placed considerable trust in the Snowball Rentals team and entrusted us with short-term rental operations, with good results arriving frequently.

As shown in the booking screenshot below, a guest rented through Airbnb for 47 nights. Without deliberately planning it, a short-term rental became a mid-term rental.

The rental income plus cleaning fee for this booking reached $13225!

For a long-term rental alone, Redfin's estimate would put 47 nights of rental income at approximately $7200.

With Snowball Rentals operating this house, rental revenue increased to $13225, a rise of more than 84%.

More importantly, the owner does not have to worry about maintenance or cleaning. When something needs to be discussed with guests, we also help with communication and oversight.

Here, we again thank the owner for trusting the Snowball Rentals team! Your excellent home attracted a celebrity and secured this large booking.

After Airbnb’s downturn in 2023, we at Snowball Rentals hope to help owners regain ground in summer 2024!

Once again, heartfelt thanks to our homeowners for their trust and support. Whether the market is strong or weak, Snowball Rentals will stand with you and look for ways to increase your income!

Some homeowners will surely ask the hard question: was a large booking like this just a stroke of luck? What if the home does not rent? A long-term rental is more stable—even earning less is better than earning nothing!

Our answer is: the outcome depends on what we do.

Vacation-Rental Styling

Competition on Airbnb is becoming increasingly intense. The days of piecing together secondhand furniture, taking phone photos and earning easy money on Airbnb are over. Airbnb hosts have moved toward professional operations.

Careful design and furnishing before launch, followed by professional short-term rental operations, will be the only choice for a rental that continues to generate high income.

Here is another of Snowball Rentals’ core services: vacation-rental styling!

Using the home above as an example, let us look together at its appearance after furnishing:

When choosing a short-term rental on Airbnb, would this home’s appearance attract you?

If you would also like to make your home more attractive and earn more rent, please contact us at any time!

This Week’s Short Videos

We regularly update short videos every week.

The content you need is all here.

👇🏻 Homeowners are welcome to follow us 👇🏻

Snowball Rentals

1

Snowball Rentals

1

We also share practical vacation-rental styling plans and creative ideas to help you achieve more with less spending!

Keep rental income growing!

Xiao An’s Vacation-Rental Styling

1

Referral Rewards

If you are already a Snowball Rentals homeowner, you receive a US$500 referral fee for each referral.

If you are not yet a Snowball Rentals homeowner, you receive a US$250 shopping voucher for each referral.

Snowball Rentals Management

1. Full service — We provide pre-launch rental design, furniture procurement, furnishing, professional photography, online marketing, copywriting, tenant service and sales, cleaning, supply purchasing and property repairs. You only need to be a hands-off owner; we handle the rest.

2. Multi-platform promotion — We promote the home on Airbnb, VRBO, HomeAway and other mainstream platforms for maximum exposure.

3. Dynamic pricing — Using big data, we adjust prices every day according to seasonal demand, holidays, last-minute vacancy offers, weekends and local activities, maximizing the owner’s income.

4. Income-improvement SOP — We follow 44 secrets for maximizing short-term rental income, optimizing each property’s online marketing, on-site operations and other aspects to work toward maximum income.

5. Flexible owner stays — Owners can flexibly choose when to stay themselves. This is especially suitable for owners with multiple residences around the world.

6. Terminate at any time — Management does not require an annual commitment. The owner can end the agreement with one month’s advance notice.

7. Corporate housing — In addition to nightly rentals, we work with insurers and assignment companies to provide executives with hotel-style managed accommodation for stays longer than 30 days.

8. Transparent fees — For rentals longer than 30 days, we charge 15% of accommodation revenue. For nightly rentals under 30 days, we charge 20% of accommodation revenue.