Great point on the goal of balancing speed and safety. How much do you charge for a security deposit? First month's rent or a little less?
Thanks! I usually go with the first month’s rent as the security deposit — it helps ensure the tenant is committed and covers any potential damages. Some hosts charge a bit less to attract more inquiries, but I’ve found matching it to the rent keeps things smoother overall.
Great point on the goal of balancing speed and safety. How much do you charge for a security deposit? First month's rent or a little less?
Hey Carter, having worked for a relocation company I find that property managers charging first month's rent is one of the biggest ways they fail to secure the reservation. Rarely, would we see a prospective tenant be able to afford one month's deposit especially when rents for short term are often charged at a premium. We used a few other strategies to curtail the deposit that seemed to benefit both parties involved.
@Cole Gauldin - what type of properties are you guys using? Are you talking about studio apartments or one bedroom apartments or single-family dwelling homes?
For example our clients who ate paying us are not the people staying in the house. The last number of people staying in our homes are not the ones paying us for them to be there.
Our model is more of a business to business model instead of business to consumer.
I agree with @Cole Gauldin here. In the area we operate first month rent is a lot of money that guests do not want to have tied up. We usually charge $1000 for deposit, maybe upto $3000 for our more expensive units.
We have had to keep part of the deposit in very few occasions
@Denis Um - See my reply to Cole above. Perhaps the homes you're using for your own business model are different than the types of homes we're using and with that, perhaps the type of clients you have are different than the type of clients we have. so with this information, it makes sense that our answers/responses are different. None are wrong. Just different for different reasons.
@Nick Copland I list my properties on Furnished Finder and utilize their tenant screening tool for screening applicants, which I find to be very straightforward. However, I don't have a solid approach for corporate clients, such as insurance companies or relocation companies. I'm curious to see how others are managing this.