All Forum Posts by: Mike Shemp

Hi @Mason Hickman,

Thanks so much...that is super helpful!  We chose those 3 areas based on my wife and I driving around and seeing which areas we personally liked.  Since we end up spending 1-2 weeks a year at every rental, we want it to be a place we enjoy being at...in addition to ensuring the numbers work.  We're also open to other areas as we have only explored some of the cape, and have much more exploring/research to do.  

That's great to know about the dog-friendly.  Ours definitely would be dog-friendly...we are huge dog lovers and like to offer that to our guests if we can.

Thanks again for the great information...I'll reach out to you directly if we have any additional questions as we look.

Thanks!
Mike

Hello,

Does anyone here own or operate STRs on Cape Cod? We're looking to purchase a small cedar-shake cape and offer it as a pet-friendly STR fr couples. The areas we are currently thinking about are Harwich, Orleans, and Dennis.

Any thoughts on those areas would be greatly appreciated, as well as how rentals do in the off-season as we would also like to operate it all year.

Thanks in advance.

Mike

Quicken for bookkeeping.

Pricelabas for dynamic pricing.

Hospitable for guest communication, cleaner communication, and Schlage locks.

Other automations via custom Python bots I wrote.

Mike

I think the name matters, but it's one of those things that if you're not on top of your game, it won't matter at all.  

I think it's good to have the right name, you can use it to brand yourself....but if you have pests in your house, cleaning staff is not cleaning the house properly, you have poor communication with guests, etc. it won't matter.

Mike

We had a wood burning fireplace on the cabin we bought in 2020.  

Keeping it was keeping me up at night, so we converted it to a gas fireplace and it's been great.

Mike

We give our cleaners a holiday tip/bonus at the end of the year.

The amount of the bonus factors in the yearly performance such as compliments on cleaning, complaints on cleaning, and going above-and-beyond when needed.

Mike

We use Hospitable.com for all guest messaging, canned messages, alerting our cleaner when we have a new reservation or cancellation, automatically setting the key codes for the locks.  So far it is doing a pretty good job.

Mike

I do the same as @John Underwood.  We use VRBO and Airbnb and let them sync with each other.  So far, no issues.

Mike

We pay the handyman, cleaners, etc. how they preferred to get paid.  All transactions get recorded in Quicken and assigned to the appropriate rental and business category.

Mike

Your cleaner will be getting tips at the holiday time from all of their clients.  Be the client that tips the most.

Mike