Airbnb now shows 8 short-term rental listings in College Hill, including 3 entire houses and a house with 3 apartments

1001 W. McGee Street, now a whole-house short-term rental

1010 W. McGee Street, also a whole-house short-term rental

Airbnb has listed short-term rentals in College Hill since at least 2014, but there may be more of them now than ever. This week, 919 Carr Street hosted its first Airbnb guests, bringing the total number of short-term rental units in the neighborhood to at least eight.¹It’s possible there are other Airbnbs in College Hill. The website doesn’t provide specific addresses until reservations are made. It also show users only the rentals that are available on the dates specified for reservations. I checked dates in several months and found only these listings in College Hill. I didn’t find anyplace in the neighborhood listed with the other major short-term rental site, VRBO.com.

The online rental platform has become so popular, and, presumably, profitable, that two recently sold historic homes were bought specifically to become whole-house Airbnb rentals, 1001 W. McGee Street (“Stunning 4 bd/2 bth filled with every lux comfort!”) and 1010 W. McGee Street (“Grandeur and Beauty College Hill”). Both had been owner-occupied, single-family homes. 1001 W. McGee sold for $430,000 in December 2021; 1010 W. McGee sold for 375,000 in July 2021.

919 Carr Street, the most recent Airbnb listing in College Hill

919 Carr (“Cozy on Carr”), also a whole-house rental, had been a conventional rental property before being listed on Airbnb.

A large home on South Mendenhall Street offers three apartments (“1906 Rustic Comfort,” “1906 Classic Retreat” and “1906 Victorian Refuge“). The owners have a special-use permit to allow the three short-term rentals, which can accommodate a total of 12 guests. The owners themselves live in the house as well.

Other Airbnb rentals in College Hill include part of an owner-occupied, single-family home on Rankin Place (“Spacious Upstairs Suite”) and an apartment in a commercial building on Spring Garden Street (“The Fishbowl”).

At least three previous College Hill listings appear to have been taken off the site — a room in a house on Tate Street, an apartment on Tate and a small guest house on Walker Avenue.

Accommodations for visitors are nothing new in College Hill. In the relatively recent past, there have been two B&B’s in the neighborhood, the Troy-Bumpas Inn on South Mendenhall Street (1992-2016) and the College Hill Bed and Breakfast (1987-90) on Carr Street, but neither of the current owners offer Airbnb rentals.²From around 1949 to 1967, a tourist home eventually called the Manor Motel stood on West Market Street at Tate Street, now the site of the Greensboro College’ Reynolds Center (one section of the motel still sits behind the main building). In the 1960s, across Market Street in the 1000 block were a tourist home where the State Employees Credit Union now stands, the Shady Grove Motel in the Queen Anne house at 1020 West Market, and the Town House Motor Lodge at Market and South Mendenhall, built around 1962 and now called The Inn at Greensboro.

Numbers of Airbnb units vary in other older Greensboro neighborhoods and historic districts. There are more than a dozen listings in Fisher Park and at least four in Dunleath. Lindley Park has eight, and the Brice Street neighborhood, between Lindley Park and UNCG, has at least 11. Glenwood has at least seven. There are about six in Westerwood and only a couple in Sunset Hills, where property values are far higher and rentals of any sort far fewer.