My wife & I sold our short-term rentals yesterday.

It was a very hands-on business, and one that has undergone significant changes since I first got involved in 2014, when Airbnb was still a budding platform primarily built around renting out single bedrooms.

Through the ups and downs of renovating an old home, building two more new homes, city regulations changing multiple times, consumer behavior shifting from booking months in advance to last-minute, Covid, non-stop policy/platform changes, the variable nature of things like weather, hot tubs, maintenance workers, and the occasional threat or extortion attempt from a guest, I was certainly never bored.

We constantly adapted and made it a win.

But, man, what a great teacher that was. It's the primary reason I am where I am today.

Aside from a few renovations, it was the first thing I ever designed & built from concept to finished product. An empty lot transformed into a beautiful physical environment, indoors and out, where I made every single construction, landscape, and aesthetic decision.

Then, of course, once I finished building it, I was just getting started.

Furniture, decor, lighting, landscaping, systems, procedures, signage, guest policies, cleaning protocols, hot tub/pool protocols, city compliance, and maintenance scheduling.

We made that project as good as it possibly could be, given our resources at the time. I'll always be proud of it: a beautiful courtyard, modern, colorful interiors, a little urban oasis.

Swan innertube, hallmark of peak Airbnb era

And now it's the end of more than an era.

It feels great to complete the cycle. I'm excited to have 25% of my mental capacity back. My wife is happy to have 75% of hers back - she was the day-to-day.

This endeavour taught us everything, and it was the first time I really experienced being fully immersed and consumed by something. When I was building these, I would sometimes visit the construction site 3x a day. I was all in. I'm glad it found me.

It was the foundation that allowed me to speak online about short-term rentals, construction, and ultimately design.

If you've never taken on a construction project, it's not by any means easy, but the amount of things you'll learn will pay dividends throughout the rest of your life. No better way to learn so much in a compressed period of time.

Highly reccomend!

some things i saw this week

I keep thinking about landscaping because of the sauna we are building and also because there's just so much opportunity in our backyard. I've been thinking about adding some landscape beds.

I saw this minimalist Japanese-looking Long Beach project from ORCA landscapes. I love this because they found one attractive, simple material and used it for everything. The simple outdoor kitchen looks great; more folks should do this. A lot of bad outdoor kitchens out there, keeping it simple might be the move.