All Forum Posts by: Cliff H.

 Great observation James. Formal, uniform tenant screening matters. Exactly what I’ve used for over a decade of turnkey, fully-automated, remote tenant leasing. Happy to connect and see if I can offer additional insights. I’ve sold houses this way. Shockingly effective. 

This is actually not true at all. Airbnb, like the Ubers, GrubHubs, and other VC backed imposters pretending to have a business model simply used the same play of pouring cheap money into flashy marketing and lofty, if empty, claims about changing the world. In reality all AirBnB was doing was what others have done for generations: trying to push out competition by subsidizing the cost of massive losses on the platform in the early days in order to try and exploit platform effects later. 

Read enough other short term rental operators posts and you’ll see they failed to establish that monopoly and now have to show profits, which have been a challenge and will get far more challenging unless things improve with their image and operations over the next 1-2 years. Airbnb sees hosts as simply an inconvenient overhead, instead of the actual foundation of their business.

This is even more true now that they’ve pivoted into designer properties, which is basically just a fast-follow to what Hilton and Marriott have been doing in allowing smaller boutique hotels/brands to book off their main sites, without the rest of us even knowing it’s not a Hilton or Marriott property. 

As several others have posted here the future of short term rentals is owning your own platform and becoming your own Airbnb. This is actually not that hard, but does involve more than 10 clicks on a platform website that’s not acting in your best interest anyway.

Paul, this is brilliant. Great idea to have your rentals stay on someone’s mind for a year+ after checkout with something that matters to your guest demographic. 

Some on TurnoverBnB, some on Guesty for Hosts’ built in turnover messaging. As others have said, the process is not rocket science, but without extra personnel or way more time than I have there’s no way I’m texting cleaners on ever-changing schedules.

TurnoverBnB’s pretty good at what it does and the I’ve found the inventory management side of it be increasingly valuable, but the software is pretty bad/buggy and yes some cleaners will just refuse to use it or check off all items in 30 seconds as they head out the door, which defeats the purpose of a checklist. 

Right so I’m not imaging doubling revenue through toothbrushes, more so that this is commonplace n hotels where the essentials are fully stocked by check-in and some destinations are pretty far from stores or (as with a few of mine) in areas where stores close early so it becomes another avenue for improving first XP. It’s certainly the case that many of the high net worth folks I know have their caretakers fill their fridge for them before they arrive, which in cases of STRs could be coordinated through turnover staff for added revenue (same as restocking supplies).

Stumbled on this service, which appears to be an interesting business model in itself and got me thinking about how this might work for convenience items such as toothbrushes, deodorants, or other items that are not necessarily stocked in the unit, but are often forgotten by guests coming to stay: 

https://www.thehost.co/

Anyone using services like this?
How’s your experience been so far?

Hi Amran. I've done both, however if all you're asking your PM to do is hand out keys this may be why you're on PM #5. Your PM should be a partner that allows you to scale, has the local network to make your life easier, and provides better bookkeeping/reporting than you can do yourself. 

If not and you have time on your hands, by all means self manage. 

Sane ideas, different pricing structures

Price labs charges based on a fixed price per property.

Beyond and wheelhouse charge as a percentage of bookings

I'd recommend trying all out and deciding what works best you based on usability and options

Wheel house I've found to have the most options but at cost of complexity. 

Time will tell, but at the end of the day $1m property still = locking up $200k/property minimum. How long before I’m making $200k in net return? Not arguing the numbers on an area I know little about, just observing the reality of time margin on return.