Monday, November 17, 2008

People seeking to make a quick buck off of the Inauguration

Since I live in the District, the whole city has been buzzing about the Inauguration activities that will be taking place in honor of President-elect, Barack Obama. I am excited about the prospect of being so close to all of these activities, but I since I don’t have personal or professional connections (working on it though!) to take advantage of to gain entrance to any events (so far), I am relegating myself to events open to the general public. I would like to attend at least one Inauguration Ball partially because of the opportunity to be apart of a historical event and partly because I love to dress up.

One thing about this whole flurry of Inauguration talk that I hear everywhere from work, to conversations with friends, to overhearing random tidbits of convos on the Metro is: Where will out-of-towners stay because it is virtually impossible to get a hotel room anywhere near DC? Homeowners are taking advantage of this fact by attempting to rent out rooms and even their entire homes to out-of-town guests coming for the Inauguration. Washingtonians plan to rent out their homes for astronomical prices to make some quick money.

I respect your hustle if you plan on going through the headache of finding reliable tenants, clearing your home of personal effects, and being prepared for any damage your short-term tenants could inflict on your personal effects or property. Since I rent and don’t own my place, I am not taking any chances. It’s just not worth it for me…though I live in an ideal part of the city for that sort of thing. I have a good relationship with my landlord and am not trying to mess things up by having subleter’s damage my apartment. But my friends are welcome to come visit me and couch surf to take in some of the events with me if they so desire.

So I’m just curious, would you sublet/rent out your place if you were in the DC area to make some money off of the Inauguration activites?

2 comments:

DINKS said...

Wow, the odds of that eh?! That's probably good you don't rent out for the landlord relationship :)

I think we're gonna have to pass though cuz we're not as close as we'd like. Def a GREAT idea though!

Anonymous said...

I do it all the time, but I don't have anything of great value in my apartment - no plasma tv, no jewelry, nothing that would break my heart to have broken or stolen...that's already happened (bastard liar ex-bf kept my goodies and pretended like I must have stored them elsewhere).

Believe it or not, you can get a pretty good read on people through email and phone contact. Think about the kind of people who want to be around for a presidential inauguration...ones who are excited about the future of their country. They're there for the atmosphere and the historic moment, not to do depraved and illegal things. Just a thought.