When it comes to the law, there's two things you will need to start Airbnb Hosting your apartment in Austin: A City of Austin business license ($500) and your landlord's agreement to let you host.

That first item may be changing soon, as the state legislature is again taking up the contentious issue of whether individual cities like Austin should regulate Short Term Rentals (STRs), or whether that should be the state's job.
Identical bills filed this session in the Texas House and Senate would require cities to permit short-term rentals and limit their restrictions on them. Presently in Austin to comply with city law, hosts need to pay an non-refundable annual $500 fee, show proof of insurance

Most of Austin's enforcement efforts have focused on just a handful of properties, mostly unlicensed, with the most complaints to the city regarding parking, noise, and public drunkenness. Few of these have been renters in multiunit buildings.

Whether these bills pass this year, there's other legal issue - getting your landlord's approval so you're not evicted for violating the no sublets clause of your rental agreement - is still one renting Austinites will have to cope with.

LetUlet helps Austin renters become Airbnb Hosts

There's a startup that can help you with this problem. It's called Letulet. What Letulet will do is negotiate with your landlord for you, making them an offer including a financial incentive of an agreed upon percentage of what you actually make Hosting on Airbnb. And, Letulet helps answer other common landlord objections to renters hosting by providing a mechanism for spelling out House Rules that you can require your Guests to agree to.

Now your landlord has a very good reason for saying yes, a professionally written agreement they can sign digitally, and a super-easy way to get them the revenue share you and your landlord agree to — after you are paid by Airbnb, Letulet routs a the portion of the payment you owe you landlord direct to them after each reservation. So you only pay them from what you actually make from Airbnb.

What's more, as part of Letulet's ongoing service, they offer your landlord an online dashboard where they can have transparency into the hosting calendar and track the financial activity.  Therefore you don't need to worry about providing that information to your landlord, it is done for you by Letulet.

So, if your interested in converting the days your apartment is empty into days you can make money using Airbnb, check out Letulet, the easy, painless way to get your landlord's approval.