Real estate's hottest investment: An Airbnb near a World Cup stadium

Homeowners near major sports venues are investing to convert properties into short-term rentals for events. In the Kansas City area, Myriam Totta and her husband spent $55,000 upgrading a four-bedroom home, and since listing in December it has seen only a handful of bookings; their first guests caused about $1,200 in damage.

Totta is using dynamic-pricing software (about $20 a month) and hopes to charge roughly $2,500 a night during the World Cup. Analysts and industry data point to strong demand: Airbnb hosts in cities such as Dallas, Atlanta, and Los Angeles are expected to earn roughly $212 million from World Cup stays according to a Deloitte analysis, and median asking rates in Kansas City for key tournament dates are up more than 200% year over year.

Proximity to stadiums helps, but hosts say listing quality and amenities increasingly determine who books. Management companies and tech tools have proliferated to help homeowners capture event traffic.

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