Corporate Housing By Owner (CHBO)
Insurance Agent · AZ · Member since 2013 · 306 posts · 161 votes
I just came across this site that may be beneficial to those of you who have rentals that you may want to rent out to corporate clients:
My experience with Corporate Housing By Owner.com
I tried CHBO out for 6months. 5 units listed at $129 per month. I would get inquires every once in a while but only booked one resident thru the site and that was during the last 2 weeks of my 6 month agreement. I did get weekly phone calls from exotic vacation holiday - seems they use chbo’s site to generate their leads - trying to get you to post on their site. Those people do not give up either - block the call and they just call from another one the next week.
CHBO made a judgement call (without consulting me first) to remove my contact info and replace with CHBO’s contact info. Not with regards to my actually listing on their site but if you select the option on CHBO site to broadcast your listings for you it posts to zillow - which then zillow broadcasts it to trulia & hotpads. I was told by CHBO they did this because of the sales calls from exotic vacation holiday harassing their clients. I only found out about them removing my contact info when checking on my listing in zillow and noticed some guys name and # that wasn’t mine.
The contact info listed on my units was going to a rep w CHBO. I called it and he didn’t answer. Next day I called again - no answer just VM again. Third day, a Friday I went ahead and left a message and he responded but not until the following monday. I also sent an inquiry thru zillow as if I was interested in renting - a response came 3 days after my inquiry. My issue was, I prefer to take the calls that come in especially being the number it was going to was not reacting to the leads as fast as I could.
Another issue was my units where being posted as 1bd’s (not 2bd’s) on their “search by major cities” page. I kept getting responses from tech support that they where not seeing what I was seeing and recall the guy saying “not to worry as most don’t search this way anyways “... oh ok! After taking screenshots of what I was seeing on my browser they did finally fix it.
So- then there comes the time to cancel as I was headed towards that final month. I used their contact form to alert them that I was not interested renewing - I did not receive a response, I then emailed the rep that initially got me set up and never got a response either. Another day I used the chat service on the site to get some sort of confirmation in return that I would be cancelled and no automatic draft would come in january. He said I had to wait for my 6 months to cancel. Which essentially meant I had a one day window to cancel. Made no sense, so I copied and pasted that chat to the girl who set me up and again.. no response. Finally, after the frustration noise in my final attempt for a response in an email I was told that my account would not renew and I was confirmed for cancelling. Finally! Then Jan 24th came and YES they drafted out the $129. I replied back to that old confirmation email and they did returned my $. A week later I got a survey from them.. not inquiring on my experience with CHBO but rather a survey with questions regarding how I am operating my units so they could assist me moving forward. HA!
I offered my feedback to all the issues I had in an email to CHBO. The same rep that had gave me confirmation of my cancellation initially email that she appreciated my feedback and the owner would “probably” be reaching out to me. That call has yet to come. Why would the owner call me? Perhaps because I said I would offer feedback if anyone ever asked… and you asked :)
It’s a great service I am sure for some but not for me. I have used CL since 2005 to book my furnished units and the return on that has been no vacancy with zero spend on advertising. This is no joke either. I only advertise a couple weeks out of a resident leaving and it gets rebooked fast. I have about a 5hr window to get cleaners in and out and restock paper products before the next resident moves in. The only time any home has sat empty over a night is when I need to have a repair made.
I discovered CHBO from a podcast the owner was on. She talked a good game. This business has some systems & process in need of fixing.
Another downside to listing with CHBO. When my units are full I don’t really care to take email inquiries and calls from potentials. Using CL, I only get calls when I have a listing posted.
I booked one resident from it in 6 months. So the return on that advertising $129 x 6 months = $774. I cash flow monthly $1,120 on the unit that booked from the CHBO lead.
How has the latest installment of CHBO and Turbo Tenant gone. 3 month report?
mostly ok. There was never any chbo, only turbotenant and Craigslist. I charge a very high price for furnished rentals in a small (tourist) market. Tends to be very slow in attracting qualified prospects.
I also attracted an unusually high number of flakes and had to push out a few people after renting.
it seems a somewhat unusual situation having long-term groups in a furnished rental. Turn over seems to be much higher.
on the other hand, beats being empty for 4 months during the winter.
An example is what appeared to be salt-of-the-earth family who bailed after a couple of months and took everything out of my kitchen. It took two months to fill.
I think the initial travails of trying to fill with qualified people and probably a year from now will be much more stable. Some of the groups are great.
I tried CHBO and also found that it wasn't worth the money. I saw the not very positive experiences in this thread, but I figured it would be worth it if we at least got one booking through it. But after two months there hasn't been a single inquiry. CHBO reps say it's a slow time of year and says we should post more photos of the outside, etc. But during that same period of time we easily booked 3 stays totally 6 months of medium-term corporate renters (a travelling nurse and two business travelers) using AirBnb for the same property as soon as we opened up the availability on AirBnb.
The biggest red flag is that CHBO offers no free trial period, they charge a large up-front full-year fee, and it's completely NON-refundable. If they knew their service had better value, they would offer a trial period, a monthly subscription option, and a money back guarantee. There's clearly a reason why they're one of the few services that does none of those things. I knew that was a red flag when I found that out, but I ignored my guy feeling and tried it anyway. But it was just a waste of money, but a lesson learned.