Rockin' and rentin'

Austin homeowners turn over their keys to ACL Fest-goers and turn a profit, too

By Helen Anders
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, September 17, 2009

Two weeks from today, Rusty Irons will pack a bag and vacate her cowboy-contemporary two-bedroom home on Bouldin Creek so that total strangers can move in and party all weekend during the Austin City Limits Music Festival.

She's fine with that. In fact, Irons is beyond fine with it. She's been renting out the house next door, which she also owns, for four years. She says she's had nothing but good experiences. Well, there was one couple who knocked a hole in the wall with the dresser — but "it was a very small hole," the ebullient Irons says with a smile.

So this year, she's trusting her own home to music fans, listing it, along with its neighbor, on HomeAway.com.

"ACL people, they just want to have beer in the fridge," says Irons, who is not only putting beer in the fridge but also stocking the pantry with water, coffee, condiments and special treats like Texas ham. Need a baby-sitter or masseuse? She'll find one.

"I want to give service at the level of the Four Seasons," says Irons, a former pharmaceuticals executive. "I love doing this."

She has plenty of company. Austin-based Home-Away.com has 112 listed properties here, and 96 of those are already booked for ACL, according to spokeswoman Denise Fraser. There are dozens of listings for ACL weekend on craiglist.org as well.

ACL has a good reputation with homeowners, according to Christine Karpinski, director of HomeAway's owner community.

"Let's face it. ACL seems to be a bit more of, well, sort of a middle-aged crowd," she says. "They're at the shows the vast majority of the time. When they get home after a long day in the sun, they're just going to crash."

ACL-goers like renting houses "because everybody gets a bed, but they can sit down to dinner together," says Kelley Sandidge, who is renting her two-bedroom house in South Central Austin, about a mile from Irons', to six 30-ish friends gathering from all over Texas.

Until recently, Sandidge lived in that two-story house and rented out the small house out back. But this year, Sandidge had a baby and has worked less at her Web-based interior decor business, hiphaven.com, so she decided to move into the little house out back and rent the big one for ACL with HomeAway.

Whereas Irons' house is contemporary with bursts of bold color and quirky touches such as cowboy boots mounted on the wall, Sandidge's is intensely Austin with its xeriscaped yard, cowhide throw rug, chenille bedspread (her grandmother's) and collection of antique radios.

Both Irons and Sandidge are charging $400 a night for their houses. Fraser says the average nightly HomeAway house charge during ACL this year is $256, a bit more than what homeowners charge the rest of the year but by no means a gouge. When four to six people rent a house, they typically save money over what they'd pay for motel rooms.

Renting to ACL-goers can provide some quick extra income, and if you rent your home for fewer than 15 days a year, you don't have to pay income tax on the money you make. (Of course, if you don't claim the income, you can't write off expenses, either.) No extra homeowners insurance is needed to cover losses or liability.

People who list their homes with HomeAway pay $329 a year for the listing. HomeAway also provides online guidance on how to market a home, what to charge and how to prepare the home for rental. It offers downloadable rental agreements and tips on how to spot a scam.

For example, watch out if someone says he or she wants to arrange a surprise trip for someone else (who might not show up) or if the renter suggests paying with a cashier's check or wire transfer, says Karpinski, who also is author of the "How to Rent Vacation Properties by Owner" (Kinney Pollack Press, $26).

In the end, though, it's up to the owner — on HomeAway as on Craigslist and other sites — to choose the tenant and hammer out the deal.

"It's easy. Google them," says Matt Reynolds, who rented out his parents' Zilker neighborhood home (with their permission) for ACL using Craigslist. "You can find out if they are who they say they are." He says he got about half a dozen responses to his ad. He chose a group of six men in their late 30s and 40s from Montreal, one of them a lawyer. This is Reynolds' family's first experience with renting their house for ACL, and he says nobody's nervous.

"There's no 100 percent safeguard" against bad renters, Karpinski says, but she offers these tips on renting your house:

Talk to the renter on the phone. A quick conversation will give you a sense of who the person is. Get personal information like name, address, phone, number of people in the party and a credit card number. A hotel asks these questions, so a legitimate renter will expect to answer them. Watch out for a person who makes a point of telling you he or she is a doctor, military officer or prince.

Irons recalls turning down one would-be renter who roused her suspicion by declaring himself to be a doctor and harping on how much he cared about his family.

"You just kind of get a feeling," she says.

Peg the rent and deposit to your expectations. A rock band full of 20-year-olds? Get a big deposit. People who come across as needy and demanding? Quote a higher rent.

It's not always easy to anticipate this sort of thing. Irons learned that when one couple ran her ragged, calling her at 10 p.m. on a Saturday to announce that the woman couldn't find her vitamins.

Check up on the renters.Or at least say you plan to. Advise them that a housekeeper might be in during the week. "They don't have to know the housekeeper is you," Karpinski says.

Give them a good mattress and new linens. A nice bed buys a lot of good will from the renters, who, Karpinski says, are in turn likely to treat your house better.

Make sure your Web description is full and accurate."You want people to be pleasantly surprised, not disappointed," Karpinski says. Post lots of photos. Don't call an office with a foldout couch a bedroom. Sandidge, for example, lists her home as a two-bedroom but adds that there are other places to sleep: foldout couches in the den as well as a single futon in the utility room (which is nicely furnished and doesn't look like a utility room at all).

And be accurate about location. Reynolds' family home in the Zilker neighborhood is within walking distance of Zilker Park. Those of Irons and Sandidge are a few miles away, so their posts say their homes are a quick cab or bike ride to the park.

Lock valuables and personal clothes in a closet.Irons has a large closet off the master bath that she'll lock. Otherwise, she says, renters are free to use her things. (Remember the medicine cabinet. You can bet they'll look in it.)

Password-protect your computer files.Or simply remove your computer. Sandidge offers wireless service for those who bring their own computers. Irons leaves her computer for guests to use but has a separate Internet connection for them.

Be aware of your homeowners association restrictions.Many of Austin's new condominium projects, for example, forbid rentals.

Get money up-front.Collect at least a 50 percent deposit well in advance to guard against no-shows. Karpinski recommends using PayPal or a credit card.

HomeAway's Web site for owners, ownercommunity.homeaway.com, has more tips and information, and it's accessible to everyone.

Karpinski, by the way, owns several rental properties that she leases during ACL, but she will not be renting out her own home. She says she'd never do that.

"I can't handle the emotions," she says. "There is a difference between someone handling my own belongings and someone handling the things in my vacation homes."

handers@statesman.com; 912-2590