All Forum Posts by: Jennifer Maiolo

@Pat L., that is so helpful - I'm glad it was as easy as asking nicely and having very reasonable tenants in that situation! Thank you so much for sharing.

@James De Stefano, thank you so much. That is such a great point. I really should have seen this coming with having all utilities covered, but I do think I will addend the lease agreement and will know much better for future tenants!

@Ethan Jacobsen, thank you so much. That is such a good point of having one set "covered" amount for utilities. I haven't been liking the unknown of what I will see when I log on to that bank account. Thank you!

@Brian Van Pelt, thank you so much for your input. You're right, I really should consider myself lucky that it's not worse!

I have a single family home, currently housing two adults on a month to month lease. Since the house was originally seen by the tenants on Airbnb, we ended up doing a formal lease and off of the Airbnb platform, due to longevity of stay. We negotiated to include the utilities in their rent. However, we (my parents and I are the owners) noticed that they are using the HVAC in excess and using what appears to be unnecessary electric (TVs and lights remain on even when not in use and air conditioner is running constantly). They also purchased a window-unit air conditioner (the house has central air conditioning already) which my dad saw when doing yard work; otherwise, we were not made aware of this addition.

My question is whether or not it makes sense to make an addendum to the lease, stating that we will cover upwards of $100 (for example) for the electric bill, and the remainder will be added on to their next month's rent. Certainly, we have learned from this experience and plan to put electric in the tenant's names in the future!

Thank you for any input you may have for a rookie landlord!

@Erik Applegate, @Monica Jorge thank you both for such great advice and input. I truly appreciate it!

@Jeremy Taggart Thank you so much. This makes so much sense. I definitely think that is the way to go. For your short term rentals, do you go through all of the same avenues with screening tenants and the paperwork (list of past landlords, credit score, etc) as well as having them sign a lease? As you can tell I am very new to this. Thanks so much in advance!

@Paul Sandhu Thank you so much - this is very helpful!!

Thank you all for this great advice. I should have added that our county houses the Shell cracker plant, which has been bringing droves of people to the area who need short term housing. My thought is that for the next year or two, this single family home may be best served as a short to long term rental instead of AirBNB until this large project is over. We are going to have this couple sign a month to month lease agreement. The only question I have is whether to totally leave the AirBNB platform for this particular rental agreement and do this separately or stay with AirBNB in terms of collecting the rent and for the 'additional' AirBNB protection (which I do not have experience with yet) and for hopefully a good review at the end.

Again, thank you all for taking the time to reply to this thread!

Hello! My parents and I are new to the AirBNB community. Our first inquiry is a couple who wishes to stay in this single family home for 3 to 6 months for work. This would be our first guests to stay in this home through AirBNB. Does anyone have advice as to going about a longer term rental like this? To my understanding, you can still go through AirBNB but also have the guests sign a short term rental agreement separately. I want to be sure we go about this the right way if we are to accommodate this guest. Thank you for any advice!