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Anyone do weekly or monthly vacation rental and not shorter term?

Posted Jun 14 2020, 09:33

Hi everyone,

This is my first post and I look forward to learning from the experienced folks on this board.

I've been a landlord for many years and currently own three properties. Two are vacation rentals and one is my home that I'm leaving and will rent out as an executive/corporate housing home (moving into my future husband's home, but want to keep mine). I'm semi-retired and don't think I want to buy anymore income real estate. I will become an equity partner in my husband's home when we marry. Four properties will be enough for someone who wants to eventually become a total "good-time Charlie." :)

I actively manage the Lake Tahoe rental and the quality of my housekeeping service has dropped quite a bit over the past six months. This started when the woman's husband started to clean with her. What used to take her a few hours to clean (four-bedroom/four-bathroom condo), now takes her and her husband about 30 minutes. However, they are not really cleaning anymore, just pushing dirt around and the place is now grimy and rather disgusting. I had not done much inspecting this year due to travel and the pandemic, but when I did right after their last cleaning, I was shocked at how badly it was cleaned. I won't go into details, but it was not rentable in that condition. 

I did a big clean myself this past week to get it back to a decent level, but will not use this service again. Now that I'm looking for another housekeeping service, I'm seeing all kinds of hybrid models of vacation rental services. Partial management, full management, some businesses selling app services (but no help with housekeeping, maintenance -- you know -- the real work), ala cart services, housekeeping services that are also doing maintenance and some management, etc. 

I have no mortgage on this place and the carrying costs are roughly $1,000/month with HOA, taxes, utils, maintenance, etc. I've completely renovated it over the past few years, so it's in great shape and very nice. I plan to use it more, say one or two weeks per month in the summer. Not sure about winter use, but I used to stay there for a week or so each winter. I live about an hour away, so it's pretty easy to get to.

With the pandemic, I had to shut down for a couple of months, then per our county's health department, was only able to rent for two-week stays or longer. To my surprise, I got two one-month stays and when things opened up more I got an additional two one-week stays.

These longer stays replaced the mostly weekend-long reservations that all cancelled as the pandemic unfolded. My place is walking distance to a national hotel with a large wedding operation and my place has been popular with wedding parties as a result. My place is also walking distance to the beaches and restaurants.

After losing the wedding parties, the longer stays replaced them. These longer stays have different issues than the weekend stays with more wear and tear and they become dirtier, but there is less work on my part once the renters are in the condo.

I'm having trouble figuring out how going to a longer-stay model would affect my income. Obviously, I want to cover my carrying cost, but still like some income. To get the month-long rentals, I discounted my nightly rate by about 50% and that worked.

Also, a lot of these hybrid and full management models claim to be able to increase income substantially and I'm not sure how they do it. I advertise my place on Airbnb, Zillow, and Craigslist. I have most of my bookings from Airbnb and get a lot of interest from my Zillow ad for longer term rentals if that's the route I want to go. There are two other places in my complex that are also vacation rentals and I'm right in the middle price-wise for a similar product. 

Has anyone gone to a weekly-only or monthly-only vacation rental model? Tried one of these partial-management models? I'm curious as to how this has worked for you. Thanks very much.

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