I have a decent three level townhouse in Fairfax, Virginia. The top floor is vacant – three bedrooms and two full bathrooms. I have been lazy about getting a room mate – it is on my long TO DO list. The procrastination gods may have looked upon me in a positive light, as the Inauguration of President Elect Obama is sucking the oxygen out of the short-term rental market (read: hotels and the like). I have recently been hearing stories about nightly rentals of like $10K for the week of the Inauguration in private homes. That seems a bit crazy, so I am trying to determine a FAIR market price. Then I will need to weight the cost-to-effort ratio.

When people first started asking me if I was going to rent out my rooms for the Inauguration, I could not believe there were not enough hotel rooms in the area to meet the demand. It seems that the hotels are upping costs by requiring people to book for 4-5 nights – not just one or two nights. That can hurt – even at the “normal” rates of $100-$200 a night that are not uncommon for the Washington DC area.

Okay, so I am in the Fair Lakes area. To get some context, I tracked down a price for a local hotel. Zoinks! $379 per night is the cheapest rate for Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Magically, the rate goes down to about $200 a night on Wednesday. That is in a nice hotel, so not totally equal to renting out rooms at my house. It is exactly equivalent in terms of distance from the Mall, so it is comparable there. Those numbers certainly gives me something to work with…

Anyone out there looking for a good deal? Let me know what you would offer!