Ever wondered what it must be like to live in Buckingham Palace? Well, you might just find out if you have an extra million dollars or so to spend to rent it.
Popular online hospitality service Airbnb has recently revealed interesting estimates of how much the queen could ask for to rent out her entire home and list it as an Airbnb location.
Here are the numbers.
Crunching the Numbers
According to data from Airbnb, Queen Elizabeth can easily make $1.3 million a night should she ever decide to list the Buckingham Palace on their website. They came up with this massive number after gathering data on the average accommodation rates of hotels in the same area and estimates from other hospitality websites.
Apparently, the queen can rent each royal bedroom within the palace for around $4,600 a night per room.
There are reportedly 52 bedrooms at Buckingham. Of course, Airbnb also considered the cost of renting the rest of the five-floor royal headquarters which has a total of 775 rooms including offices, bathrooms, staterooms and many more.
Renting the Royal Headquarters
Airbnb also said that the Buckingham Palace garden could easily fetch a rental fee of $522,000 while its 19 staterooms would most likely go for over $20,000 each. The palace has an indoor pool, a post office, a private theater and even a medical center but these weren’t included in the company’s estimate.
If these were included, Airbnb’s $1.3 million initial estimates would probably rise by a few more thousands. Well, that is if the queen would actually put her home in the vacation rental market for some reason. Perhaps when another financial recession comes?
Buckingham Palace is currently the home and administrative seat of the monarch of the British royal family. However, it was initially built in 1703 to serve as a ‘townhouse’ for the Duke of Buckingham. Because of this, it was first simply known as Buckingham House. Some decades hence, the property was acquired by King George III to make it his queen’s private residence.
It would be turned to its current massive splendor in the late 19th century when two architects, Edward Blore and John Nash, were commissioned to enlarge it further.
Palace Makeover
Even if the queen wanted to rent out Buckingham Palace, it would be impossible to pull off at the moment given the ongoing renovations being done there. The $482.5 million palace makeover is set to be completed in about 10 years.
According to reports, the renovations are mainly targeting the palace’s susceptibility to fire or water damage and thus, needs major and urgent work to fix its defects.
In the meantime, royal fans can quench their curiosity and watch a ‘virtual tour’ of the palace on the royal family’s official Youtube channel.