All Forum Posts by: Cliff H.

 Do tell. 

Anyone have an idea of how this is going to work? No security deposits in listings? Really hoping this is not another erosion of property leasing 101 by the magicians at AirBnB who think they know better than hosts. From email this afternoon, 

Our community of Hosts and guests is founded on trust and we are always working on ways to strengthen that foundation.

In the coming weeks, we will be making the changes described below.

Airbnb is taking further steps to hold guests responsible for damage they cause to your listing.
By the end of May, guests will be informed that their payment method may be charged if they cause damage to a listing. As part of this update, security deposits will be removed from the listing settings page.

Airbnb is updating how rebooking assistance and refunds work for guests.
We are updating our guest refund policy for stays to allow 72 hours to report travel issues and clarify how refunds and rebooking assistance are handled. Review the updated and renamed Rebooking and Refund Policy here for details.

In November, we launched AirCover for Hosts, inspired by your input. We’re committed to continuing our work to advance our protection programs for the community.

Thanks,

The Airbnb Team

I’ve had decent luck finding rural cleaners (that still need screening BTW) off TurnoverBnB.com’s marketplace. YMMV. 

Hi folks, with Silicon Valley's push to try and automate traditional MFH property management, I'm curious if there's any providers you've heard of or tried that are also attacking the HOA/COA space as well? None of the names listed above appear to be pivoting into the homeowner association space, yet here in the northeast USA it's still quite a fragmented industry outside of the major urban centers with established and deep-pocketed PM firms.

I've spoke with the folks over at Abodea, who do offer a scalable call-center approach to HOA PM at quite affordable rates, but we're still missing the kind of local, on-site general contractor/handyman or capital management planning schedules that would be required for proactively addressing homeowner and community association needs.

Curious what others are seeing in this space. 

Some great answers above here @Grey Stone. Having both LTRs and STRs what you intend on doing with the property between now and when you "leave it to your children" is, as Luke implies, potentially far more meaningful over that time horizon than whether you cashflow $70k or $60k/year. 

LTR and STR are radically different markets with dramatically different tenant expectations and overhead. Many LTR investors jump into STR thinking they can automate their way out of guest engagement/experience, while failing to understand that the difference between a luxe Westin and basic Comfort Inn is that guest engagement/experience. Neither is better or worse than the other, it's just a different experience and pricing model. 

Sure you may ultimately hire that rockstar hospitality host to run the place for you, but those folks don't grow on trees or leave their job at a luxe hotel for an investor with a single STR still learning the ropes and trying to figure out how to manage day-day turnovers.

• LTR it if want max returns in the short term and plan to nuke + pave it later on for personal use. 
• STR it if you want max flexibility in the short term and intend to slowly improve it w/a mix of personal + STR use over the long term.

Hope this helps!

It’s the exact same product, other than a color rebrand. No new features yet, which will likely correspond to higher pricing anyway given Guesty’s MO. 

Just to clarify: Vermont is *not* a year round market. Nor is much of any of New England.

The secret to finding a good cleaner? Go through a lot of bad ones.