- When Bridget Shirvell moved into her Connecticut vacation home full time, she kept renting it out.
- She makes her home available for the summer and travels, working remotely, while guests stay.
"Always worship puppy drool": The phrase is one of the first things my eyes fall on when I walk into our kitchen after a summer away. It's been spelled out with word magnets on our fridge. By whom? One of the summer people, though which one I'm not sure.
The summer people are largely unknown to me. They're the people I rent my home out to via Airbnb and VRBO.
I know their names, where they're from, and why they decided to come to Mystic, Connecticut, where I live when they're not here, but that's it.
Apart from the traces they leave behind — forgotten bottles of wine, discarded books, and phrases on the fridge that make me smile — they're strangers to me.
My plan was always to rent the house, but that didn't include me living in the home full time.
I purchased the historic shingle-style cottage a few blocks from Mystic's bustling downtown, less than a mile from the house I grew up in, as a vacation home. It was a retreat from New York City that was close to friends and family and that I rented out for $250 to $500 a night when I wasn't using it.
For a few years, it was precisely that. But when I moved back to the area full time three years ago, I didn't stop renting it out.
At first, I kept renting it because I wanted to honor my existing bookings. And if I'm being honest, I wasn't yet sure I was staying. Since graduating from college, I'd never lived in any one place for more than two years. Not renting out the house would mean committing to a home in a way I hadn't in my adult life.
It didn't take long for me to realize that continuing to rent out the house — though for only 12 to 16 weeks a year instead of 30 to 40 — not only was feasible but offered some irresistible benefits.
Top among those benefits, unsurprisingly, is the income.
The money from renting out the home offers me greater financial flexibility as a freelance creative. I can make as much as $20,000 a year, depending on how many weeks I rent it out. The additional income means I can say no to work I don't want to do (and people I don't want to deal with).
Choosing to rent out my primary residence also forces me to go somewhere — to travel around, or, in my case, settle into another town in a way you can't if you're visiting for only a week or two.
In the summer, I almost always book a vacation rental for myself through Airbnb for at least a month, as I've found most hosts will offer a nice discount if you stay for 30 days.
I look for rentals that cost about 10% to 20% of the income that renting out the house will bring in. If I'm flying, I'll find a cheaper Airbnb to compensate for the costs of flights.
It's not easy to pack up and unpack your life. It takes a couple of days to essentially move out of my home.
About six weeks before my summer people arrive, I start making a list of things I need to do, including double-checking the dates renters will arrive and getting supplies like extra paper towels, laundry detergent, and other household goods I need to leave.
Then I slowly move clothes and personal items I'm not taking with me into either my attic or the writing studio (I almost always leave that off-limits to guests, unless someone stays for more than three weeks and specifically asks for access to it).
Over the past year I've started leaving more personal belongings after making it clear in the listings that the house is a primary residence. So far, no one has seemed to mind.
The housekeeping service I use when I'm living in the home and for the short-term-rental turnovers also makes so much of it work. After five years of working together, I know I can trust the housekeepers to keep the house in order and alert me to issues. They come every two weeks when I'm home — so, for me, cleaning expenses go down when we have guests, because I charge a cleaning fee.
At 3 years old, my daughter is up for almost any adventure I plan — a summer in rural England surrounded by sheep, or a month at the beach in Nova Scotia. But I can imagine years from now her not wanting to leave friends for the majority of the summer.
As we settle back into our home until next summer — leaving "always worship puppy drool" on the fridge — I'm glad we've been able to keep sharing the house.
I love looking through the guest book and reading tidbits of what the summer people did: how they caught a glimpse of the fox that lives nearby while they made morning coffee, how they caught up with friends over a bottle of wine on the front porch, or how much fun their kids had at camp at the Mystic Seaport.
Hearing about their adventures always makes me fall in love with my hometown again, and I look forward to spending time immersed in the local area.