As thousands of people plan to come to Pittsburgh for NFL Draft, locals prepare to help house them

PITTSBURGH — Hundreds of thousands of fans are expected in Pittsburgh later this month for the NFL Draft, many of them needing a place to stay.

With hotels now in short supply, homeowners across the region are jumping in on the action.

“(We’re) expecting demand, and it can be very lucrative,” said Sara Gopal, who owns a house in Perry Hilltop. “We have a beautiful location and a beautiful house, so we thought we could share it with others.”

Gopal and her husband, who built the home in 2023, listed it on Accommodations for the Draft, a new site connecting local homeowners with short-term rentals for the event.

They’re hopeful a group of NFL fans will enjoy the home, which sleeps 11 and includes three decks, two kitchens, home gym and elevator.

“We really designed it for entertaining, so we’ve done some really big family gatherings,” Gopal said. “Thanksgiving, we had 15 people and three dogs or something like that, and it works.”

Local realtor Sandy Wonchek is behind Accommodations for the draft. She saw the demand first-hand when she coordinated rentals for last summer’s U.S. Open at Oakmont.

Homeowners can advertise for a one-time fee and speak directly to potential renters who reach out.

Though she doesn’t participate directly in reservations, she said she’s seeing homeowners step up in a big way.

“They’re going all out,” she said. “They said if you want to smoke, we’ll make this a cigar lounge. We’ll have wine tastings.

We can provide transportation to and from the stadium. So, they’re really putting their best foot forward and beefing up their amenities."

At times, those amenities come with a big price tag.

Gopal is hoping for $25,000 to rent her place for the weekend.

A Shadyside condo on Accommodations for the Draft is listed for $100,000. Though that is certainly an outlier, even modest stays could cost a few thousand dollars.

One local short-term rental manager doesn’t know if those high price points will stick.

“I think when the draft was first announced, people were like, ‘Oh, I’m going to get $10,000 a night,” said Chad Wise with HostWise Stays. “I don’t think that’s realistic.”

Wise’s company manages 150 short-term rentals in Pittsburgh. With about three weeks to go before the draft, he said about 40 percent of his properties were rented.

He thinks homeowners are holding out for top dollar, while renters are waiting for prices to drop.

“We look at what happened with the Taylor Swift concert. Same kind of deal,” he said. “People were waiting until the last minute. People were not sure if the bookings were going to come in. In that last 14 days, everybody booked.”

Wise believes the other shoe will drop one way or the other, bringing new dollars and new people to Pittsburgh. “The draft puts us on the national stage, and the idea and hope is that once people come here, they see what an amazing city this is, they fall in love with it and they come back again and again.”

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