Updated 25 days ago on . Most recent reply
Cancelation of Guests and Data Center Discussion
This was not ever something I intended to do. I was relatively new to the rental game when it came to AirBnb and I was focused more on renting to the Mid Term market. However, after the first year I was honestly just trying to get someone to book my property each month and I didn't care as much about AirBnb as I did covering the bills. I soon found that if I didn't have someone in the property for 3-6 months I would use AirBnb to carry over the months where it wasn't booked and found I could usually fill my home for 3-7 days with random guests and cover my bills.
One aspect of this carried over into my predicament I find myself in now. I don't want to cancel on guests but, here is what happened.
Previous monthly rent for my property covering all bills was $2700/month. All bills combined were about $2100. The new tenant I have in there now is paying $3200/month and is staying until December. He moved in on the 24th of April.
About 3 months or more ago someone booked my property for July 4th weekend, but only for 2 days. I forgot on my end to make the minimum stay 3-4 days and increase the price. Holiday bookings are killer out here over the holidays around the lake. So my conundrum is this, is there a good way to cancel on guests at Airbnb and offer up the truth as to why I needed to cancel, offer up a sincere apology but keep the reason to why as vague as possible, or should I offer up maybe a cancelation with a little extra apology money on top to smooth things over.
Lastly, this may be a hot button issue to a lot of people, so I will only propose a little bit of what I know to be true and allow anyone who wants to add to it to voice their opinions. I repeat, not looking for any bad engagement, but possible opportunity for this community to make some big profits if it comes up in their space.
My question/issue is this; have any of you been near where a data center is being built? My guess is that a lot of your answers would be "Yes". What I have seen in a lot of these smaller cities and towns is when they start building them, hotels and motels go way up in price, usually tripling. I figured that to those who had AirBnb's and other such properties could probably rent to companies like this for a hefty amount. I spoke to a couple of people in small towns like my own who went from renting their house for $800/month to $7,000/month and companies like Google rented it for 10 years. Even though this is an extreme example, there is a real possibility they will be building one of these data centers right across the street from my house and rental. Now, I don't personally want a data center right next door, but if there is going to be one, then I want to rent my house and my rental property for $7k/month and then build two more homes on my lots attached to my rental and rent those as well. I guess the conclusion of this dialogue is this; if you are going to have endure a large data center going in near your little town, at least you could do yourself a favor and turn a 10-15 year plan into a 5 year plan if you capitalize on the opportunity.
Most Popular Reply
Peter,
It sounds like you double booked the unit. Your long term renter from April to December includes the 4th of July holiday. I don't think it matters whether it was a 2 or 3 day booking, it's still double booked. I can't tell from your posting whether the long term rental or the 2 day Airbnb reservation was booked first. Economics would dictate that you keep the long term renter. You will likely have to cancel the airbnb booking. You probably should have blocked out the dates from April through December to avoid this. You will be penalized by Airbnb as a host. I have not cancelled anybody since they changed their policy, but you may have to pay a penalty of 10% of the reservation amount.
