I am purchasing a turn-key completely furnished and stocked short term rental that I will continue to operate as a STR after purchase. The seller has the property listed on Airbnb and there are multiple bookings in the coming months. Does anyone have experience with this type of situation? Do the bookings transfer over to me somehow upon closing? Does the seller cancel the bookings on their account?
It’s a pain I had to do this on my last purchase. The only way it can be done is previous owner has to cancel and then you can request to rebook. I had people with flights booked so imagine the worry when they saw your house was just canceled the day before their trip after 10 months of having it reserved. The prior owner actually gave me his login and I canceled on his side and request to rebook from my account. All of them rebooked. It was a bit scary for some of them with the refunds of credit cards taking a few days to process to trust the process. It made sense to keep the bookings as we closed in June and all of Summer calendar was already full vs hoping to get last minute bookings, plus I also thought it was the right thing to do. People plan for a while to do a big trip to Disney in a 7br home. I also honored all the prior booking prices.
AirBNB will NOT transfer bookings from one account to another. Your best bet would be to negotiate a deal with the seller where he/she would refund the guest and provide them with your new AirBNB listing number and the guest would re-book with you. Guests would probably expect you to offer the same price, but that is all up to you to negotiate. One potential issue is if the old owner cancels their reservations they lose superhost status. I would call AirBNB and ask about this. Personally, I would try hard to get the bookings, not just because it's in your interest, but many times people have booked non-refundable flights and it would be a shame to have their vacation ruined by the sale of the property, especially if it's a popular time of the year and they can't get another place.
Airbnb bookings are not connected to a property. They are connected with the account. That account is also connected to a bank account. This is messy any way you look at it. All of the contact and payment info will have to be changed to your information. And that will only work if your seller doesn’t have other properties on the same account. If they do have other properties, it’s also not likely they’ll want to cancel the reservations as that affects their rating as a host.
You’ll probably need to contact Airbnb to have them let you know the best way to change this in their system as it is their system.
@Jennifer Bryan I would suggest negotiating with the seller to retain the account for a period and pay you any rental income. At a point in the future (30-60 days perhaps) they block the calendar for the property and you start listing it in your host account.
Start your own listing for the property on Airbnb, Homeaway, Vacasa, Evolve and all the other vacation rental house websites. You can also put a listing up on Craigslist. 99% of my online bookings come from Craigslist. 1% come from the vacation rental websites.
My STRs are for refinery contractors. Big burly guys that chew tobacco in their sleep and have neck tats. You'd avoid one if you saw him in an aisle of Wal Mart. I'd punch him in the arm and say "What's up mofo, the hand lotion aisle is over there."
I would get the owner to collect the booking contact info. Let him tell them what is going on and send them a link to your new listing so they can re-book with you. You could also get the contact info and call/email the people to explain why they will need to re-book with your new account for same property.
@Jennifer Bryan It's a pain to deal with this...once you are past contingencies in Escrow, have the owner cancel the bookings provide the guests with your contact that you will honor the future bookings and provide them your site once it's up to allow them to book and adjust the rates to match what they paid (if you want to do that, you don't have to though). Don't try and deal with the payments in flight and all that stuff with the existing booking, it's not worth it in the end.
It’s a pain I had to do this on my last purchase. The only way it can be done is previous owner has to cancel and then you can request to rebook. I had people with flights booked so imagine the worry when they saw your house was just canceled the day before their trip after 10 months of having it reserved. The prior owner actually gave me his login and I canceled on his side and request to rebook from my account. All of them rebooked. It was a bit scary for some of them with the refunds of credit cards taking a few days to process to trust the process. It made sense to keep the bookings as we closed in June and all of Summer calendar was already full vs hoping to get last minute bookings, plus I also thought it was the right thing to do. People plan for a while to do a big trip to Disney in a 7br home. I also honored all the prior booking prices.
@Jennifer Bryan I literally just went through this is exact scenario 3 weeks ago and it was not worth it at all. Taking the listing live on AirBnB and VRBO while trying to sync both calendars and hold for previous reservations was a nightmare. We made it work, but it was not without a lot of headaches. If you're buying something turnkey that's already doing well, I wouldn't think getting new bookings would be a big deal at all.
All my STR's came with bookings. Wasn't a big deal. At one I got a check for 15K at closing and a list of bookings I had to honor. There's no better way to buy property than to have it come with $$. Others were with a management company. I just had them manage it until the last booking and then took over. I lost out on some commission for a couple of months but in the long run not a major problem. There are lots of ways to deal with this and it's a common thing if you are buying in a true vacation area.
@Joey Morea - How did you cancel all of the previous bookings without getting in trouble with Airbnb? I am purchasing a home with $50K in bookings and Airbnb said he would be banned from the platform if he cancels more than 2 a year! The seller and I both want to do a clean break but Airbnb is making it impossible. Thanks for any help!