YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Mahoning Valley residents who rent their properties for short stays via online platforms enjoy interacting with new people, contributing to the local economy and earning supplemental income.
Some guests are just passing through. Others are visiting family, attending a wedding or checking out the sites when they rent a house or apartment using an online platform like Airbnb or Vrbo.
Casey Macioge started offering his property for rent on Airbnb about 10 years ago while living in Pittsburgh. He lived alone in a large house, within walking distance of Heinz Field (now Acrisure Stadium) and offered rooms in the home for people attending sporting events. He charged less than nearby hotels.
When he returned to the Mahoning Valley, he continued to use the online platform to rent to out-of-town visitors, first in his home and then in other houses he owned.
Guests have included medical students, traveling nurses and construction craftsmen working at sites in the Valley.
New People
And he’s met some interesting people. The house where he used to live was close to Mill Creek Park and he rented one of its rooms. A lot of people who stayed there were Valley natives who visited the park in their youth and wanted to return to walk the trails.
“There was this one guest that was staying with us from Nashville who was not from the area, but her grandfather, I guess, might have been,” Macioge says. “And when she was a child, she had a puzzle of Lanterman’s Mill that she used to put together with her grandfather. And so she had made up her mind that she was going to go to the place where this mill existed.”
The woman stayed for a couple days, sitting by the mill and sketching and photographing it and walking through the park. “And it was literally because of a puzzle she did as a kid,” Macioge says. Another guest stayed at the house while researching the history of cookie tables.
Erin Timms rents out four rooms in the Calvin Center for the Arts in Youngstown for visitors. Other rooms in the Mahoning Avenue building, built as a school in 1877 and designed by renowned architect P. Ross Berry, are available for lease. Other areas in the building are used for commercial space.
“We’re in a great location. We are off the highway close to downtown, so it seemed like a good fit,” says Timms, who bought the building from her brother’s estate in 2018. “I also enjoy the aspect of what it is. So part of what I got into this was about creating a unique space that was somewhat geared towards health and wellness, a spiritual center. So part of my mission of creating this space is to do something for the community.”
Timms, who worked as an industrial archeologist, likened her building to an ashram in India.
“That’s part of how I got into it. There’s this idea of the unexpected guest, people who come into your world that you might not meet otherwise, and how they might influence you, how you might connect,” Timms says. “You might have a moment or some kind of thing that brings you to a sense of enlightenment or have these shared experiences, at least. And so part of it is to open my space and to allow that to happen and to create that kind of community.”
Hard Work
That’s the long-term goal. Using the space for short-stay rentals was a way to generate income and she put a lot of work and money into bringing the building up to code for residential use.
She installed 88 smoke detectors as well as fire doors, in addition to sanding and refinishing floors, painting, and replacing windows and lighting. Her buy-in to become an Airbnb business neared $200,000, she says.
Timms diversifies though, offering her rooms on other platforms too, working to ensure her business is year round rather than seasonal.
The reasons that bring people to Youngstown and to her building vary.
“I have people who are traveling through,” she says. “Youngstown is a great stopping point when you’re going across the country, coming from New York, going to Chicago, or going all the way to California. So I get the travelers, the people that are just traveling through. I get people who are coming home to visit family, for weddings, funerals, what have you. I get people who are like me, who are just traveling for work.”
It exposes her to all walks of life. She has many return visitors too, people who love the unique space and book a room each time they visit Youngstown.
Lowellville Units
Ray Carlson bought, gutted and renovated two long-vacant buildings in downtown Lowellville and turned them into Airbnbs.
It was a lot of work and a significant investment, but he didn’t plan to use them for that purpose initially. He hadn’t decided on a use when a friend in passing mentioned the platform.
“I didn’t want to sell it,” Carlson says. “I put in a lot of love and effort. I do most of the work myself. So I have a lot of love in them, and I don’t want to part with them.”
He didn’t want them to sit empty either.
“I think there will come a time here, maybe sooner than we think, when things start returning local,” Carlson adds. “And I think these old buildings, instead of demolishing them, will be of use to the future generation.”
The building on the North Side he calls the Liberty Building and it’s been available on Airbnb for about six years. He started posting the other on the South Side about four years ago. Each is brick and has two stories.
“The one on the North Side, you can rent it as the whole building or just the upstairs,” Carlson says. “The upstairs has a two-bedroom apartment and the downstairs has a pool table and a golf simulator and a cigar room.”
Each of the three building owners report an occasional negative episode through renting out their property from parties and domestic disputes to destructive guests and calls to police. But they say positive experiences far outnumber bad.
Macioge and his husband keep in touch with some guests who send them birthday and Christmas cards every year.
Design Matters
The house he rents through Airbnb is on Youngstown’s south side and he used his eye for design to curate furniture and decor that give a unique flair and homey feel.
“I think one of our strong points, and you could look through our reviews, I’m very attentive to people, and the design factor is what makes the home feel inviting,” Macioge says.
The decor of some other homes available through online platforms resemble dorm rooms, he says. He and his husband instead collected items through estate sales and Facebook Marketplace.
“We would get nice furniture to furnish the house so that it felt like something more like what they might be used to in their own home,” Macioge says. “So that was, I think, for us, a strong differentiator.”
They were also strategic with the houses they bought to rent, ensuring they had lower overhead so they could offer their rentals at a lower price point.
Important to Know
For anyone interested in renting property through an online platform, there are some things to keep in mind, Macioge cautions.
Insurance is one. Macioge says those costs for short-term rentals have jumped recently. Utility costs are another. A guest might take long showers, crank up the thermostat or run a space heater nonstop, for example.
Appliances may need to be replaced more often, so Macioge encourages those entering the short-term rental business to consider having backups on
hand.
Each of the rooms in Timms’ Calvin Center offers a double bed, bathroom and kitchenette and boasts a different theme. One sports a masculine motif with sturdy furniture and darker colors.
Timms calls another the bird room. Two chairs donated by a friend resemble bird cages and through a window, guests may watch a nightly show of birds swirling around and settling into a chimney at a business across the street.
As a short-term rental host, an individual has to be prepared for late-night calls when a renter can’t work the electronic keypad to get in the building or an appliance stops working. Carlson, who is a pharmacist, hired someone to handle those calls.
Despite the occasional headache, he doesn’t regret being a host.
“You meet many people from around the country with very interesting stories. Old buildings are being saved that otherwise had no apparent purpose and you give income to neighbors and businesses,” he says of the advantages. “So in spite of the challenges that regularly occur, few ventures that I have undertaken have been as rewarding to me as being a host of an Airbnb.”
Pictured at top: Erin Timms, owner of the Calvin Center for the Arts, rents four rooms in the historic Youngstown building to short-term visitors through online platforms.
