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Elvartus VanLienben and his son, Nathan McDonald, are offering their home in Spotsylvania County for rent. |
From grad students looking to make an extra buck to rental-property managers trying to drum up business in a slow month, plenty of folks in the Fredericksburg area are testing the waters in the market for inauguration visitors who can't find hotel rooms.
With two months to go before Barack Obama's Jan. 20 inauguration as president, hotels as far outside Washington as Williamsburg and even West Virginia are reporting no vacancies.
Campgrounds, recreational vehicles and charter buses also are getting booked up.
In Washington, a huge number of people are listing their spare rooms, fold-out couches and futons for rent on Internet classified-ad sites--some for $1,500 a night or more.
That kind of grass-roots capitalism doesn't stop at the beltway, though.
Ads can be found for spare bedrooms, apartments and empty homes that have been on the market as far south as Lake Caroline.
The listers include both experienced Realtors, developers and property managers and novices who just want to see what kind of response they can get.
Nobody contacted for this article had reported much of a response to ads offering bedrooms around Fredericksburg.
Elvartus VanLienben of Spotsylvania County casually listed his home on Craigslist a couple of weeks after the election.
His asking price: $1,200 for three nights in his three-bedroom, two-bath home. Bring your dog if you like.
When contacted this week about it, VanLienben said he'd forgotten about the ad. He hadn't had any offers.
He said he was a big supporter of Obama and volunteered in his campaign. His house is for sale, and he has somewhere else he can stay if he can rent it.
He said he'd read that hotels were filling up and that folks were offering to rent their homes.
"I absolutely love Barack Obama, and I figure if someone wants to see him bad enough, I guess I would do it, too," he said.
VanLienben isn't planning to make the trip to Washington on Jan. 20, though.
"I'm not going to go stand in the cold," he said. "I can watch it just as good on TV."
At the Manor at England Run off U.S. 17 in Stafford County, managers decided to put an ad for one-bedroom apartments online "just to test the waters," said Community Director Rob Zernick.
They hadn't had any bites as of Friday morning--a day after their ad went up. Zernick said they were waiting to see what kind of demand was out there before they decided to go through with the rentals.
Zernick said the apartment complex is at 95 percent occupancy right now, but January can be a slow month.
The opportunity to generate business has to be balanced, though, against the costs of serving very short-term guests. To offer a furnished apartment, for example, they would have to pay for a three-month furniture rental.
Their ad asks $3,000 for a one-bedroom apartment for Jan. 18 through Jan. 21.
Local builder Dan Spear has listed an 1812 plantation house he painstakingly restored in 2006 after moving it from North Carolina to Spotsylvania.
He's asking $5,500 for up to four people to stay in the two-bedroom home for two days, and he's even throwing in a limo ride--driven by a local person who knows the roads--to the ceremonies Jan. 20.
This reporter was the first contact Spear had had about the ad, which he also listed in the Chicago market on Craigslist.
"We were just trying to have some fun with it," he said.
Another ad asks $15,000 for the week for a four-bedroom house said to be in the city, "close to VRE." It fails to mention that VRE has not yet decided whether it will run on Inauguration Day.
Sara Watson got inspired to list her Stafford County apartment on Craigslist while she was driving to work at a Fauquier County high school Friday morning and heard that people were looking for inauguration-week hotels as far away as West Virginia.
"I thought, Fredericksburg is a lot closer," she said.
Watson, who is studying for a master's degree in education at George Mason University to teach English as a second language, listed her one-bedroom apartment at $2,000, figuring her visitor would be staying about three nights, but said she'll be willing to negotiate with anyone who calls.
Watson said she looked at other ads to determine how to price her apartment, but the $1,100 she pays for each of her grad-school classes also played into her pricing decision.
"I am a teacher in grad school so your $$ will be going to a good cause," she wrote in her ad.
Watson said she hadn't thought through whether she would write up a contract for a potential renter or what precautions she would take for security.
"I just think most people coming to see this are very excited, happy people," she said. "I'm a single teacher, so I don't have a lot of stuff for them to steal, anyway."
Emily Battle: 540/374-5413
Email: ebattle@freelancestar.com
| In Fredericksburg, at least, zoning is not a problem. All of the city's residential zones allow families to take in up to two boarders.
City Commissioner of the Revenue Lois Jacob said a business license is not required for this kind of rental, because it's a one-time occurrence and "They're not running a business." |
