All Forum Posts by: Pablo Flores

@Andrew Steffens

Interesting set up. Do owners complain about you keeping pet fee and early/late check out? Also why don’t you just charge more for the waiver then it’s costing you?

We charge a 20-25% PM fee and include any upsells in the gross revenue that we are charging PM for. Ex) any upsells like pet fee and pool cleanings go to owners but we charge our PM fee on that. Some owners have expressed disapproval with that as pool heating can be considered a pass through expense.

Need a VA that can field phone calls and speaks good English. I currently have two other VAs, one that handles data entry and another that does all the messaging for guests. But I have had a hard to finding someone on that can speak decent enough English for me to trust them handling phone calls. I have looked on Fiverr but have not had much luck. Any other places I should be looking?

Thanks

I would try Fiverr. I just hired another VA to take over all payment processing duties. And I am getting ready to hire another VA to help with communications. The most important aspect is developing SOPs and systems to make it easy to train. I've used Loom to record video How Tos on how to do everything.

@Darren Le

Don’t know nor have I heard of anyone offering that service in Palm Springs. Palm Springs is a higher end market with different guest expectations so it’s hard to self manage out here. I own/manage 21 high end rentals out here and could never imagine self managing from far away.

However, try local Facebook groups. You might be able to find a RE agent or cleaner who could help you handle any in person guest issues and what not.

Anyone use their service to set up an AZ limited partnership to protect your investments? I’m very intrigued by the service and how detailed the protection strategy is. Curious as to what anyone else’s experience with them has been.

@Elliot Shoener

Lol that’s horrible advice if you are trying to scale. Time is money. There are so many tools out there that make it easy to automate your business.

@Ryan Moyer

I use Hostaway. I manage 20 rentals. It definitely has a learning curve but it is quite robust. I can’t see what else another PMS could offer that Hostaway doesn’t. There is an app but it’s quite rudimentary so if you need anything detailed it’s better to just use the web version. Their onboarding process will require about 4-6 onboarding calls just to get everything set up. But it will likely take you A LOT of trial and error and multiple email threads with their team to get everything set up the way you want. I guess this also depends on how many rentals you have and what features you require in a PMS. But I have many automations set up and have very detailed financial statements I generate every month so it definitely took me a few months to get the hang of it. Trust me you do not want to be switching between PMS after you start onboarding, so do your due diligence beforehand and choose the one that best suits your needs.

Anyone have any recommendations for a general liability insurance for a STR property management company? Also, do you all recommend E&O/EPLI insurance as well? All the homes already have their own vacation rental insurance. We do about 120 bookings per month across all our homes and have a staff of 3 part time/full time employees not including owners.

Anyone have any recommendations for a general liability insurance for a STR property management company? Also, do you all recommend E&O/EPLI insurance as well? All the homes already have their own vacation rental insurance. We do about 120 bookings per month across all our homes and have a staff of 3 part time/full time employees not including owners.

I am currently using Charge Automation to collect data. I primarily use Charge Automation to send a pre check in link from which they can directly purchase upsells like pool heating and early check in. But a dual function is that they have to input basic personal information during the check in process. Which is nice since Airbnb does not provide their actual email.

@Leslie Anne Morris Is this a VA you hired for this purpose? Does your employee also design the marketing template and write the content or simply automate everything through MailChimp?

@Brooklyn McCarty  Let me give Canva a try. I can use ChatGPT to write the content and I can set up the automations myself through MailChimp. Its more so designing nice marketing templates that I was looking for help with.

I attached a picture of a template i had somone from Fiverr create. Its good but i think it can be better.