All Forum Posts by: Ken Boone

Me and my buddy's have said this for years.  Anyone can make a killing in the service profession in that town if they do 3 things:

1) Answer the phone or at least respond to voicemail in a reasonable amount of time.

2) Actually show up when you say you are going to show up

3) Do a good job at whatever you are doing.

It is that simple.  If you do those three things, people like me would pay a higher price to use you on a regular basis when the need arises.

The problem like Luke pointed out, is that it is hard and most people quickly find the need to hire others to help with the workload which brings you to the next problem.  The work pool there is not good.  It is extremely hard to find good workers in that town.

You have to price competitevily if you want to get bookings.  But competitively does not mean the other homes in the area are $160/night therefore I need to be around $160/nt.  It means compared to other "like" properties.  Bigger homes = more $, more bedrooms = more $, more amenities = more $.  So you have to compare apples to apples to get your price right.  It is ok to be the most expensive house on the block IF you have more to offer than the other homes.

I don't think it is necessarily the lower price that brings in worse guests - I think it is a lower price point for a given property.  There are tons of lower cost rentals that get booked and are not always getting trashed.  But I have noticed for my properties, when the price drops below a certain point, my odds definitely go up of dealing with problem guests.  But that price point is different for each property it seems.

But like @Collin Hays said have your price lower to start, get some traction and reviews and then you can slowly start raising your price till you find where it needs to be.

Best of luck to you!

@John Carbone Not sure about that, all of my properties sleep less than that. 

My cleaner just spoke to the one of the operators at one of the convenience centers who is also a county commissioner.  He stated that is it will be awhile before they stop cleaners from using the convenience centers as they haven't even started building the facility where they will require cleaners to go (This means no way that it will be fully implemented on August 1st).  He also told my cleaner that they will be give them a good notice before it starts.

Having said all that, he said they plan to start stopping some of the bigger cleaning companies and cabin rental places from using the convenience centers soon to see how that affects things before they try to implement full scale on all cleaners.

Of course this is second hand info so take it for what it's worth.

@John Carbone Here is the county's press release about the trash issue:

https://www.seviercountytn.gov...

They are good wordsmiths.

Here is a link to the petition if it gets allowed:

https://www.ipetitions.com/pet...

 Yep my cleaner said the same thing. Starting August 1st she was told.

For those of you operating in Sevier County, a few days ago, the Sevier County Board of Commissioners passed a new updated solid waste plan.  

First of all the problem as I understand it - some convenience centers are filling up too fast and are closing early presumably due to short term rental trash increase.  This leaves residences of the county having to travel to a different convenient center to drop off their trash.

The new plan is creating a "central" facility where all cleaners must go to take the STR trash. All of the convenience centers will now be enforced as residential only. In addition, a new fee will be charged to the cleaners depending on the size of the load.

This is coming in to play shortly after Sevier County made a ruling that overnight rentals will now be changed to commercial properties thereby levying a 60% tax increase on many short term rentals.  It seems like a simple solution to me.  Use some of that 60% tax increase they received and pay for more frequent truck runs to pick up full dumpsters at convenience centers that are filling up too fast.  Done!

Instead of allowing cleaners to drop off trash at the closest convenient center and then getting back to work quickly, many will have to drive across town and then converge at one location with all other cleaners creating increased traffic problems in an already congested area.  The traffic backup alone may force cleaners to have to drop the number of cabins they support.  Most STRs in this market are turns and the cleaners already have a short window to get cabins turned over for the next guest.   They don't really have the option of just collecting trash and keeping it on their trailers for several days and cutting down on runs due to the bears in the area.

This plan seemed to not take into consideration the overnight rental market and it seems they did not consult with anyone in the overnight rental industry before creating this plan.  There is a petition asking the mayor and the board of commissioners to reconsider this plan and to create a group consisting of all stakeholders to provide consultation to come up with a solution that works best for everyone.  I don't know if I can post a link or not to the petition, but if a moderator allows it I will.

As a rule we don't rent to anyone under 25, however, we have made exceptions which included some 18 year olds for a stay.  The times I have made exceptions, the potential guests saw the rules and contacted us and communicated with us directly.  The times we felt like we were dealing with mature and responsible people we allowed them to book.  If we didn't get that feeling then we would stick with the rules.  So the times we allowed it, we have never had any issues.  I think you just have to be careful and vet them out through conversation.  Maturity and responsibility do not all of the sudden start with a magic age unfortunately.