I am about to go live on my first STR in the North GA Mountains and am planning on using Evolve. Any feedback or recommendations on other PM companies to use?

I have never heard anything good about Evolve.

After 30 days why I'm quitting Evolve and how much it's costing me: The MAIN reason: Evolve says they only charge 10%...this is misleading to say the least. Every night stay is hit with 10% off the top PLUS a 15% charge that includes 3rd party fees (from Air BNB) and Evolve's damage waiver that I don't recall choosing or having the option to opt out. So, I lose 25% of revenue every night. Here's my price breakdown: $159 is what I charge, however on Air BNB my price is $187 which is comparable to my competitors. It took me a few guests before I realized I wasn't receiving that $28 difference so I called Evolve and asked who is. Come to find out, that 15% difference is going to Evolve for the damage waiver and to Air BNB for the 3rd party fees since Evolve is the middleman. My self-managed competitor are making more revenue than me even if their price is lower. So my listing is worth $187 per night, but I only receive $159 which is then hit with Evolve's 10% fee. Also, Evolve charges an $80 monthly fee on top of the 25% they take from every booking. That is an insane amount of charges for a company that does not actively manage anything. What it costs to break up with Evolve. 1. $250 if I cut ties within the 90 trial period 2. $250 if I want to purchase my photos 3. All Air BNB reviews are lost, and that account is closed. 4. If you don't honor the existing bookings, you are charged at least $250 per booking. 5. Lost revenue while you have to wait for Evolve to close your account which only happens after your last booking. So, I can't start my personal Air BNB/VRBO listings until Evolve officially closes on their side. For me, It makes sense to pay the fees and start my own Air BNB listing ASAP rather than continue to build up awesome reviews that will be held hostage. I hope this is helpful.

You forgot to mention Evolve's hefty guest booking fees that they don't share with you. They have to keep your rents pushed down to make the grand total work for the guest. Their actual take is somewhere above 40 to 50 percent.

I hope this doesn't completely turn you off to using a management company. There are other options out there.

I think it's definitely a mixed bag. We are in several markets and from what I hear in one market they operate pretty well and owners are happy, and in the other markets it's the complete opposite. I think really depends on what your goals are for your involvement. I believe with Evolve the owner is responsible for guest communication and managing the cleaners. If you want to be a totally passive investor and maximize your revenue, I would recommend hiring a smaller STR management company.

Evolve is a marketing company. If you add up all of the hidden junk fees that they charge to guests but do not share with you, their take is about 40 percent. And they have to lower your rents to compensate for all of the fees that they collect for themselves. Heck of a deal.

Evolve and Vacasa are garbage. Avoid them and hire someone who is building their management business local to the market you are in.

We have one short term rental with evolve. Pros: They do send a professional photographer on their dime They send your state and city taxes to the proper spots every month They list your property on multiple sites, Airbnb, VRBO, hotels.com, and their own site, Evolve. And we have had bookings from all sites. I haven't looked at the breakdown lately, but last year I think it was 50% Airbnb, 30% VRBO, and 10% each off hotels and evolve. They have $5000 insurance on their side for each guest which is usually pretty easy to access if there has been an issue. Cons: The biggest and worst is that there is no dynamic pricing that changes between weekdays and weekends. So if you have them set it to $300 you cannot change it to $189 for Monday through Wednesday to try and grab some weekday travelers. It's either going to rent at your price or its not going to rent at all. You can set it all to $189, but then you're losing out come the weekend when you know you can get $300+ They do have a dynamic algorithm that increases prices during the busy times of the year, so that's good. But about 2 months out from those times, if it's not rented yet, the price will fall down to whatever your base price is set to. There's a 10% management fee that is arguably not worth it once you have some experience and know what you are doing. But...Once you have experience and know what you are doing, Evolve has super host status and owns the listing. And maybe your listing now has 40 reviews, sitting at 4.98 stars. If you quit using them, you will be starting from scratch on your own, no reviews, no super host status. May not be an evolve issues, but they won't go to bat too hard for the owners over guest related issues. Like last year, we had gotten the place ready for a weekend stay during Halloween and the guests could check in at 4pm and we got a message around 5pm the day of that they had cancelled. They booked through Airbnb. It was a good booking, around $2400 total. We called evolve, they called Airbnb. They got back to us and said it must have been a good reason to cancel because they were allowed to cancel with no notice and no payment to us. So lost out on that income for the weekend and we weren't able to get it booked out on such short notice for the weekend. Not necessarily an evolve issue, but still.

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