All Forum Posts by: Anand S.

I recommend buying a refurbished pool heater for $2K and be done with it. 

I pay extra if it's extremely out of sorts and then charge the guest double. This generally happens during spring break when we have a lot of college students partying for a week. 

We got banned last week as well as Dade county. Not sure about the other counties in FL or other States for that matter.

I wish the Governor would take decisive action instead of half measures. 

I've had a review removed. I jumped through numerous hoops, finally speaking to someone higher up, and eventually it was removed. 

If you have in writing that the guest plans to leave a negative review in retaliation for not providing a refund, etc., that alone should be enough to get the review removed. 

We had a 3/2 home and it was the same hassle as our bigger homes and made much less money. We sold it and bought two bigger homes.

The big downside with a big home is that they book farther in advance, so if a group cancels it's harder to rebook. It's not often that 14 people simultaneously decide to take a last minute trip together. The other issue is that you're a bigger target for people that want to throw parties. This has happened a few times and it's not easy kicking a 100 people out of a home at midnight. 

I'm sure there is a point where your home is so large it hits a niche market that's hard to rent. You'll have to do some competitive analysis in your market to find that sweet spot. 

Recently a guest wanted to cancel their reservation but would've only received a 50% refund due to my cancellation policy. I offered to reschedule them as an alternative. They decided to reschedule to a date over 2 months out, which I agreed to. I updated the reservation and they accepted. Once accepted they were able to cancel and get back all of their money since the new dates were outside of the penalty window. 

I now have another guest asking to do the same thing but I do not want to get outwitted again. How do you folks deal with this? This is on VRBO. 

I get these now and again. My homes sleep up to 14 so we get large groups. We're in FLL close to the action. Folks stay here for the beach and the nightlife/activities so it's not a sleepy stay. 

We clearly state in our listing that NO PARTIES OR EVENTS allowed but folks still do it. We require 3-nights minimum. I have a term in my house rules that state if there is a violation of the noise ordinance, I keep the entire deposit and the rest of the stay is forfeited. I'm currently trying to exercise this now, so wish me luck. 

House parties have been a major issue here in FLL. The youth have no place to party since all the nightclubs and bars are closed, so the new gig is to rent a big home and throw a major bash. There have been over 1,000 reported cases here in Broward. The county is now shutting VR's down for a month in response.

The SE coast has been taking a hit for a month now. Dade has shut down STR's and I expect Broward to do so today or tomorrow. This second wave has put Florida at the epicenter of the pandemic! Pretty sad.

Nice little home and I like the way you market all the perks with the pics. Here are some comments:

Pricing for the main house seems low relative to the guest house (half the price for less than 1/3 the house)

The guesthouse mentions off-street parking but I remember seeing that the driveway was exclusive to the main house. It's confusing to me.

I'd be concerned with how two independent groups will commingle on such a small outside space. At least you don't have a pool that draws people outdoors. I don't see many outdoor pics so maybe you do this purposely to discourage hanging out outdoors?

I'm lucky (mostly)