B&Bs: A Growing Option for Home Buyers

Small inns and bed and breakfasts saw business rapidly decline during the pandemic. But operators are recasting their inns and offering them to home buyers in a new light—as a new home.

The Wall Street Journal reports that home buyers are purchasing spacious B&Bs and renovating them into single-family homes. A shortage of homes for sale and a desire for larger homes is fueling demand.

Rick and Suzanne Weichert purchased the 4,800-square-foot Jabberwock Inn in Monterey, Calif., for $2.38 million in 2014. In 2020, they closed for four-and-a-half months during the start of the pandemic. They recently listed the home for $4.95 million as a single-family home, believing a buyer from the Bay area may gravitate to the half-acre property—one of the largest in the area—to work remotely.

“It was an insanely difficult year,” Suzanne Weichert told The Wall Street Journal about their decision to sell.

B&B revenue dropped 43.7% to about $1.3 billion in 2020, compared to 2019, according to the research company IBISWorld. The number of B&Bs also fell, dropping about 1,400 to a total of 7,340.

Dave Elliott, who co-owned two properties called the Taylor House B&B in Jamaica Plain in the Boston area, told The Wall Street Journal that running a B&B has never been profitable, even before the pandemic. The inn has 11 guest suites in two adjacent properties. The properties are “worth more money on the open market as a residence” since it has both a pool and dock access, Paul Leys of Gustave White Sotheby’s International Realty told The Journal. The inn closed after 24 years and was listed on the market this summer for $3.35 million.

Image by Michelle Raponi from Pixabay

©National Association of REALTORS®
Reprinted with permission