This Is How Much a BOAT Makes on Airbnb!

Have you ever wondered what it's like to stay on a boat Airbnb or how much they make per month? Well, you're in luck because I found the most amazing boat Airbnb and today we're going to talk to the hosts about how they restored an old yacht into a short-term rental and how it's doing now on Airbnb. My name is Griffin Doan. My name is Kenzie. My family owns Netshed number 15, which is where we're sitting. Behind us is Lila, our 53-foot Airbnb boat, and we love it. We love hosting our guests here. Their Airbnb is located in Gig Harbor, Washington, about 45 miles outside of Seattle. Gig Harbor is such a great little town. We love it here. It's a historic fishing village. We're sitting at Netshed number 15 right now. There's 17 historic netsheds throughout the city of Gig Harbor. One has been turned into a restaurant, but most of them are just privately held. Some of them are still active netsheds that fishermen use to clean and dry their nets. People want unique stays. It's so, like, iconically Gig Harbor, too, to come stay on a boat. We were looking for boats because we couldn't afford a house. We stumbled upon Lila. It was built in 1967 for the Fluke family in Bellevue. They sold us their boat and for a year we remodeled it. We gutted the whole thing and there was green wallpaper and there was green carpet everywhere, even in the bathrooms. It was kind of gross, but it had been sitting for a long time and it needed some love. Here's more of a look of the before. It is a beautiful boat and it's got really rich wood textures, but it did need a little bit of updating and they did an amazing job restoring it. So it's roughly about 700 square feet. It has two bedrooms, one queen bed, and then one bunk room with two extra long twins. It has a full galley, which is the kitchen. It has one and a half bathrooms. I was shocked by how spacious this boat really feels. They really made the most of the space. Okay, now let's get into a tour of the full boat. Let's take a quick tour of this boat. Come on guys. So this is the outside of the boat. It is docked in the coolest area, but we're right by the mouth of the harbor. It's a lot of fun because our guests don't need a car. You can just leave the marina and walk anywhere. Okay, so walking into the boat, this is the first living space and as you can see it is much brighter and more modern. It still feels really nautical and has some of the original wood, but they brought it up to date and made it much more cozy. When we bought the boat, the original owner gave us all of the blueprints of when they built it and so I wanted all the guests to see it, but I wanted them to be preserved and so I put them into the dining room table and then poured epoxy down. I love that they preserved the history of the boat. Moving over to the kitchen, this is also a lot more modern. We put in quartz countertops. It had this really bad like green formica, which had to go. The original kitchen was also kind of closed in. They had a wall there, so they knocked that out and opened it up to bring in more light. So here is what it looks like now. I feel like the quartz really makes it feel like a home. You don't often see quartz in boats, but I think it really upgrades it. They've got these beautiful brass accents and the beadboard walls really help to brighten the place up. They kept these original cabinets, which actually hold quite a bit in them. They go pretty far back. The kitchen's got everything you need and while we're in the kitchen, I wanted to thank Lark, the sponsor of this video, because they make a new product that you might want for your own kitchen. This is their new Lark pitcher and it is a really cool product. This pitcher is awesome because it has a two-step filtration system. I cannot tell you the amount of times I've gone to stay in an Airbnb with a group and people go to the store and buy a bunch of these. It's super wasteful. It honestly is an important amenity to have a good water filtration system. People want that in an Airbnb and this can give you that. I bought one for my Airbnb, the Racket Club Resort, and also for my apartment in Seattle. A lot of the traditional water filters really only focus on improving taste, but they actually end up trapping pollutants and collecting them, making the filter itself a source of contamination. So the pitcher has a built-in plant-based and eco-friendly water filter. This is going to remove all the harmful pollutants like lead, heavy metals, PFAs, and chlorine. The filter has a 60-gallon filter capacity, so that's going to last 50% longer than a lot of the other water filters out there. And then the second step is what they call the PureViz purification. That's what this really cool light is, but this is a UVC light that's going to neutralize any kind of bacteria inside the pitcher. So this prevents recontamination and bacteria growth. And another really cool feature is when you go to fill it up, you don't have to open any flap. You can just stick it under here, turn on the water, and it opens itself. It's so convenient. So I will have a link to this below if you're interested. It's not just for Airbnbs. It's like, I bought one for my home in Seattle too. Anyone who wants good drinking water could make for a really cool gift too. Thank you to Lark for sponsoring, and let's get into the boat. So back into the boat, over across from the kitchen is the first bathroom. So this is a little powder room, and come check it out. It's really cool. The bathroom has the same kind of finishes as the kitchen. It feels so much more updated than most boats you would go on, and I love the wallpaper in here. All of the bathrooms have charts while people are in the bathrooms. And there's more of that bead board of wallpaper, quartz countertops. It all just feels really nicely done. This is just such a unique detail that you'll notice throughout some of the rooms here. And now let's go onto the upper level up here. So the helm is normally where you would steer the boat, and since this one is pretty much permanently docked, they've turned it into a nice little hangout area with a coffee and wine bar. There's a nice daybed that you can hang out in, or you can sit in the captain's chair and look at all the controls. For me, it was important when we were remodeling it for it to still maintain like the classic appearance of a boat. And so we put in a lot of like original boat touches, which is why there's a lot of bead board, and a lot of like the painted mahogany, and the teak in the wood, and a lot of navy and pinstripe. So heading downstairs are the little staterooms. Like we mentioned before, there's two bedrooms and one bathroom. So heading all the way down is the main bedroom. They've got like a really nice quilt. This bedding feels like very upscale and nice. There's more of that bead board and wallpaper, and they've also painted the ceiling white, which makes this whole room feel a little bit bigger too. Even though it's a boat, it feels like a home. In general, we wanted people to feel comfortable on a boat, and so our idea was to make it feel as homey as possible with still having the unique stay of being right on the water. So over in here, this bathroom is a little bit bigger than that first one, and they do have a shower in here. They've got a really nice brass faucet to match the sink. Everything, I think, just goes together so well. Like this is a really cute Airbnb, you guys. So in here, they've got two bunk bed twin beds, and I love the bedding. It's very nautical, really cute. So they have some old photos of the boat from when it was with the old owners, like really nice black and white photos. Like these were really, really cool. So that's a look at the cabins in the downstairs area. Now let's go back outside because there is quite a bit of outdoor space on this boat. So in the front entrance area, there's a spot that you can hang out, but that's not the only outdoor space on this boat. So you can walk around the whole side of the boat. It's pretty easy too because we're docked. And how cool is this? So they've got some chairs out here. Because it stays docked, these are totally fine. They're not going to move around or anything. Yeah, up here you can just take in this really cool area. All right, now let's get into the expenses. First off, the price of the actual boat. So the boat was originally listed for $100,000, which was way out of our price range, and we wanted to look at it anyways. Didn't put an offer in and kept looking for a while, and it came back on the market. So we made an offer for $25,000 and they accepted. Even more expensive than the boat was the renovation costs. All in on the renovation costs, somewhere around $50,000 with all that we put into it. Since it's only 700 square feet, it wasn't too costly to renovate. They also did a lot of things themselves, which always helps to save on costs. Now let's talk about maintenance. Boats are notorious for high maintenance expenses, but because this one doesn't ever run, it's actually not too bad. This boat has barely needed anything. A few minor leaks and stuff on the top side, but other than that it's been great for us. But that is because we put so much work initially into it. Every month we have a crew of boat washers that come and wash it, and then in the summertime we oil it so it looks like this pretty mahogany. Okay, so how has the boat done on Airbnb? We've had great success with Airbnb. We probably average a 90% occupancy on the boat. I would say we average annually 250 a night. It's much cheaper this time of year, but in the summer it jacks up. The harbor is just such a great place to be in the summer. Not surprisingly, they're able to charge more in the summer and less in the winter. Our high season is from May to like mid-October, and I think it goes anywhere like upwards of $350. And then a low season, which is what we're in now, so that's from like November to like I would say early March. It's probably like from $150 to mid-$200. Which gives them a yearly total of... I would say we probably average $65,000 a year. Considering the cost of buying Renovate the Boat was $75,000, making $65,000 in a year is really great. So there's not a lot of monthly expenses. But if you're familiar with boats, you know there's typically a monthly slip fee as well. But because Kenzie's parents own this dock, they're able to dock their boat for free in exchange for helping manage her parents' other boat. The biggest thing that's challenging for boats is boats are super quirky, and so for people who haven't had a background in boating to then come on a boat and expect it to be the same as a land dwelling. Bathrooms are different, water's different, so managing that and problem solving quickly when things come up, that's part of the job. Trying to explain to guests how the boat works over the phone or over Airbnb can be difficult sometimes. All in all, I think they did an amazing job on this rental. It has thoughtful touches throughout, and it's just so unique. When people come, it's just so fun to see where they're from and why they've come. We've had people fly here just to stay on the boat. They had no idea what was in Gig Harbor, but they just wanted to come stay on the boat, which I think is really special. Yeah. Hope you guys enjoyed this episode of Checked In. If you want to see more, I'll have them on the screen now, but that is it for this video. Bye!