How one couple found themselves sharing their home with a revolving door of strangers

Four years ago, when Tony and Suzanne McCorkell bought their forever family home in Scenic Rim – about an hour south of Brisbane – it was the home they intended to eventually settle in alone.

They never thought they would one day share the abode with a revolving door of holidaying strangers.

Last year, after having rented the place out while their sons – now aged 18 and 20 – finished school in Brisbane, Tony and Suzanne found themselves in a predicament. They had a runaway tenant, an empty home and only five months before they were due to move in.

Stuck on options, they looked to Airbnb for some short-term leases to keep the house full and busy until they were ready to move in.

Being a classic, grand Queenslander with rolling hills, a wide, wraparound verandah and views of blinding sunsets, it wasn’t a hard sell on the platform. The bookings came in quickly. In fact, they haven’t stopped since, even after the couple made the place home.

“When we moved into the house, because it had gone so well over that five-month period, we thought why not keep it on there?” Suzanne says.

And such is the story of how Tony, a photographer, and Suzanne, an interior stylist, happened upon sharing their family home with strangers. So how do the logistics work when you’re constantly removing yourself from your own home, with no place to go?

“We do a lot of house sitting, to be honest,” Suzanne says.

“Sometimes we book a couple of rooms out and we just stay there at the house if the guest is happy with that. We love meeting new people. If the whole house is booked – and we have a minimum three-night stay in these circumstances – we stay with friends or we just go camping.”

The two recognise they are lucky to be able to set themselves up remotely and work from anywhere.

“It certainly brings in great money. Tony has a stable income, but being a small business-owner myself, my income varies, so this certainly helps. Over winter and coming into the financial year, it’s a great way to supplement my income,” she says.

“We spend a fair bit of time out of the home, to the point where people are always asking us if we are ever home. In winter, it’s pretty constant, most weekends we have it booked.”

While trust is a massive hurdle for anyone renting out their home for both the short and long-term, Suzanne says the couple don’t hide all their stuff whenever the place is booked.

“We don’t put out stuff away, the guest gets it as it is. Having said that, we have only lived there for 12 months, so there isn’t a lot of crap lying around. It feels very lived in, but it is almost Airbnb-ready all the time.

“We tend to attract the people we want to be there, which is good. We have never had anything stolen, and we do have a lot of valuable things in there. We are pretty trusting people and we have never really had an issue – the people who generally book the house are the people we want.”

Despite the fact the couple can rarely settle, Suzanne says she doesn’t find it tiring and would “absolutely” recommend the process of renting out the family home to anyone able to do so.

“My sister often looks at me and says, ‘you’re a freak, I don’t know how you can do it’,” she says.

“Realistically, it would be difficult for people to do who have young families and nine-to-five jobs, unless they had a separate studio space entirely.

“But for people like us, who have the flexibility with our work and kids who are only really here on the weekend, it works perfectly. Sometimes just renting out one room at a time is a good income stream, anyway.

“We are people people – it brings in some extra cash and we are still in touch with some of our guests.

“It’s a real privilege to share the space with other people, to see people love the place as much as [we do] is so lovely.”