Should They Traditionally Rent Their Basement or List it on Air bnb?

Photo by PoPville flickr user Kevin Wolf

“Dear PoPville,

Here’s our dilemma and we are looking for advice and insight.

We’ve redone our basement apartment in our new house (less than 2 months ownership) in the hopes of renting it out and mitigating the monthly mortgage payment. However, we are finding that it is rather loud down there–footsteps and voices carry, and we have two kids under 5. We are now considering trying to do Air BnB instead of having a renter so that we do not have to be on tenterhooks about any noises disturbing our renter at any time and instead can just be careful about volume whenever someone is in the basement as an Air BnB client.

The house is under 1 mile from the Brookland metro, and the basement is about 500 sq feet with two rooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, its own entrance and its own washer/dryer. Would it make more sense to rent it and have a consistent stream of money coming in while being very careful with noise every day OR to try the Air BnB market where we’d be able to be more relaxed about kids’ play and general ambient noises, but we would have to make up any differences in monthly payments ourselves? Convince me!”