Growing Your Nest: How Short Term Rentals Can Get You Your First Home

You dream of owning your first home. You scroll through listings, imagine your furniture in those empty rooms and picture yourself turning the key of your own front door. Then reality hits. The downpayment looms over you like an impossible mountain to climb.
You are not alone in this struggle. Today’s housing market demands significant upfront investment from potential home buyers like you. Unfortunately, traditional saving methods usually move at a snail’s pace, all while home prices soar higher than a pelican gliding through the shore.
Here at Professor Pelican, we understand that it is hard to watch your dream home fly further out of reach.
But what if you already have the key to your future home?
What if your spare room, basement apartment, or that extra small space you have could become your ticket to homeownership? With short term rentals, you can transform your unused space into a steady income flow that builds your down payment faster than you thought possible.
In this blog post, we’ll teach you how you can spread your wings and discover how you can take flight toward homeownership.
Taking That Leap of Faith
The concept of using short term rentals as a home financing option might sound too good to be true. You might wonder if real people actually achieve this goal. The answer is yes, and you don’t even have to look too far for proof.

Meet Dr. Jessica Carter. She’s a part of our Professor Pelican team, who is also serving as the doctoral chair and professor of leadership studies at Trident University. Beyond her impressive credentials, she’s a mentor, a community builder, and someone who has made Charleston her permanent nest.
Like you, Dr. Carter also faced the same challenges towards her first homeownership. But she invested in the small extra space that she had. She could have waited for the perfect plan, saved slowly through traditional methods or convinced herself that the timing wasn’t right. Instead, she made a different choice.
Diving head first into it, she decided to try short term rentals.
How She Built Her Own Nest
Her journey started small. She listed the extra space she had on Airbnb without knowing exactly how things would turn out. But then, the first guests arrived. Followed by another. Until slowly, the income started flowing in. What started as an experiment transformed into a reliable income stream that helped fund her first venture into real estate.
According to Dr. Carter on their Pelican Podcast Ep 1 - Smart Moves: Leadership, Learning, & Building Your Own Nest w/ Dr. Carter: ,“sometimes, we have to take flight and kick ourselves out of our nest, figure it out and trust ourselves to learn along the way”.
This goes to show that you don’t need perfect knowledge or unlimited resources to own your first home. You just need the courage to start with whatever you have right now.
This mindset requires you to see beyond what’s in front of you. You might think your situation is too ordinary or that your space is too simple. But Dr. Carter thought the same thing. Then she took action and trusted herself to learn along the way.
Building The Nest That You Want
Of course, Dr. Carter’s success didn’t happen overnight. She strived to figure out short term rentals and leveraged that knowledge to build her own wealth.
You see short term rentals function differently from traditional leasing. Hosting an airbnb means you only rent your space for brief periods of time ranging from one night to around one week. This business model allows you to generate income without committing to long-term leases.
Additionally, you’re not limited to spare bedrooms either. Creative airbnb hosts can convert garages or transform basements into welcoming spaces for short term rentals. By starting with what you have, you are creating momentum to grow your savings.
Through this process, you’ll eventually accumulate enough wealth for that crucial down payment. Thus, the nest you build through short term rentals becomes the foundation for the permanent nest you’ll build for yourself in the future.
Gathering Momentum For Your Running Start
While short term rentals provide you with a powerful momentum towards your down payment goal, exploring the different types of home financing can give you that boost that you need. The right home financing options can make homeownership possible sooner than you think.

Several types of home financing offer different benefits and requirements. Thus, you can try exploring the following home financing options to find the best deal for your unique situation:
Conventional bank loans:
These are the most common types of home financing options. Banks usually look at your credit score and debt-to-income ratio to determine your eligibility and interest rate offers.
These are usually government-backed home financing options. You can qualify for this loan even with low credit scores, making homeownership accessible to potential buyers who cannot avail of conventional types of home financing.
These home financing options provide incredible benefits if you’ve served in the military. It allows you to buy a home with zero down payment!
The U.S. Department of Agriculture backs these types of home financing options for buyers in rural and suburban neighborhoods. Just like VA loans, they also offer zero down payment if you meet their requirements and buy in eligible locations.
Understanding these different types of home financing options empowers you to make informed decisions that bring you one step closer to building the nest that you want.
The Wind Beneath Your Wings
At the start of this blog post, you were curious about how you can save enough for a down payment on your first home. Now, you see a clear path. You now have a complete roadmap to your flight forward towards your dream home.
But if you need more information to help you take that courageous leap forward, let our team here at Call Professor Pelican be the wind beneath your wings. Your journey toward homeownership starts with what you have and where you are now.
Visit our website at www.callprofessorpelican.com or call us at +1(866) 997-3542 to learn more about how our team can help guide you as you take flight towards home.





