CINCINNATI — Danielle Henry spends her days staging dozens of condos, apartments and entire buildings around downtown Cincinnati. The properties she manages are all short-term rental units.
Before she was hopping from German row-homes to luxury apartments in the Queen City, Henry spent years in the traditional hospitality business working in hotels for the likes of Marriot and Hilton. With the emergence of websites like Airbnb and Vrbo, she saw a better way.
Now Henry works as the City Manager of Operations on a small team at Liberty Hill Rentals, which operates short-term rental properties under the host name "Chris & Chris" on Airbnb. According to its website, the company offers "centrally located homes away from home for corporate and vacation travelers."
Chris & Chris have 71 listings to their name in Cincinnati. Prices range from $50 to $3,000 per night, some of which include multi-family stays where the costs can be split up.
Chris & Chris started in 2015 in founder Chris Hikel's spare bedroom. He listed it on Airbnb to try and make some extra cash. By the time Liberty Hills Rentals was officially formed in 2019, Chris had 21 short-term rental properties across the Queen City. After bouncing back from a major dip in business due to COVID-19, the company now has more than 70 rental listings in at least 15 buildings in Over-The-Rhine, Mount Adams, Pendleton and Covington.
Henry said the majority of Chris & Chris's listings are not owned by Liberty Hill Rentals.
"We actually manage for private owners," Henry said "We do the day-to-day communications, the property upkeep, we handle the housekeeping and everything from that end."
Henry said Hikel owns around 25% of the listings. The other 75% they manage are owned by locals and people who live out of town. According to Henry, some listings are single units within condo complexes while other listings are entire buildings with multiple rentals available for booking.
One of their buildings is right next to Rhinegeist Brewery, with different themed suites named after Rhinegeist beer like the Bubbles Suite, Swizzle Suite or the Cheetah Suite. Henry said the brewery will often refer guests of big events like weddings to stay in Airbnbs owned by Liberty Hill Rentals.
"Rhinegeist obviously has that event space so we've had a lot of weddings come in, a lot of wedding parties; they need a good amount of space. We've had family reunions in that building, just different gatherings," Henry said. "Thanksgiving it... usually rents out for the entire building because people are looking for a place for their entire families to stay."
Henry said the rentals are not limited to a week-by-week basis. She said that while they don't offer typical 12-month leases, clients have rented for 3-to-6 months at a time. She said she's seen everyone from traveling nurses to filmmakers reaching out to the company because they need more than just a hotel room but won't be in town long enough to rent for a year.
"I think we are meeting a need," Henry said. "Our portfolio is so diverse that we can almost have something to accommodate everybody."
Henry believes there will always be a need for the standard hotel, but with the emergence of companies like Airbnb, travelers have thousands more options of where they can stay and when.
Right now, their business is growing through word of mouth but Henry said after they reach their goal of 80 listings by 2023, they will start focusing more on reaching out to other Airbnb owners and asking if they could use their management services. Eventually, the long-term goal is for the business to expand outside of Cincinnati.
Henry said all their listings can be found on Airbnb and the company's website. She said some listings are also now on Vrbo.
Short-term vs. long-term
Henry said property developers and property owners are shifting to a short-term rental plan instead of a traditional 12-month lease because it gives them a bigger return on their investment.
The short-term rental industry has been repeatedly accused of driving housing prices up by contributing to the housing shortage both in the U.S. and abroad. The accusations have been coming from city councils in popular travel destinations like Amsterdam, London and New York City.
Charles Tassell, the Chief Operating Officer for the National Real-Estate Investors Association, said the real estate and the rental markets are "hot" but he doesn't typically see short-term rentals impacting the overall housing and renting market in Cincinnati.
"It especially doesn't affect lower income renters or even medium income renters," Tassell said. "These are high-end properties that are being turned into short-term rentals."
Tassell said these properties that are being rented were never in the market price range for low-income or medium-income renters in the first place.
According to Apartments.com, most rentals in and around the same geographical area where Liberty Hill Rentals have the most listings start at more than $1,000 a month for a studio apartment. The cheapest listing we found was a one-bedroom for $800 a month. Less than a mile away, the most expensive listing we found was $4,302 for a two-bedroom.
Overall, there are still more long-term rentals available in the greater Cincinnati region than short-term rentals. According to Airbnb, there are more than 1,000 stays available in the greater Cincinnati region. Apartments.com shows at least 2,780 listings in the greater Cincinnati region.
The booming short-term rental market is not just a Cincinnati phenomenon. HomeAdvisor, a company that partners with Angi, recently released a report that highlights which U.S. cities are best and worst for rental investors. While The Queen City doesn't make the list, there is a trend that backs up what Henry said Liberty Hill is experiencing: It is more lucrative for investors to buy and operate Airbnb properties in cities that are not considered destination hot spots. Investors get a much better return if operating an Airbnb in Cincinnati than in San Francisco or New York City.
New York City, one of the U.S. cities with the most Airbnbs, reportedly now has more short-term locations than actual apartments to rent.
The New York City’s Comptroller’s Office published a reportarguing the increase in Airbnbs cost New Yorkers a total of $616 million in additional rent in 2016 as a result of price pressures. Airbnb responded by criticizing the methodology, saying it “severely misrepresents the impact of [the] platform on housing.”
Although preliminary research suggests Airbnb short-term rentals do have some kind of impact on housing prices, there’s still a lot of debate over how big of a rise it actually is.
What Liberty Hill Rentals (AKA Chris and Chris) is doing is a smaller version of a trend that's happening across the nation and the world.
Tassell said out of 143 million households across the country, less than 700,000 are short-term rentals, and it's not big corporations that are buying all of them up.
"About 10% of homes that have been purchased for rentals are being bought up by large corporations. The majority of it is mom and pop; it's local neighbors reinvesting in their neighborhood. That's 90% of it," Tassell said.
Despite a recent rental report from Redfin that showed rent increasing 32% in one year, Tassell said the Cincinnati area is still one of the most economical regions to rent.
Tassell blames the more pricey rental market on the lack of new building projects.
"There's been some building but with interest rates climbing, builders get nervous so they slow down," Tassell said.
According to Tassell, many building companies are extremely conservative because of the 2008 housing crisis.
"The companies that survived 2008 have those scars so they're hesitant to overbuild," Tassell said.
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