All Forum Posts by: Valerie Rogers

I'll venture a guess that she was an Airbnb booking.....right? Sounds like one.....

We own three 2 BR/2 BA condos in a beachfront building on Okaloosa Island (Fort Walton Beach, next door do Destin). We charge $2200 + fees and taxes in January and $2300 + fees & taxes in February. We could probably charge a little bit more, but most snowbirds are senior citizens on a budget so I feel we're close to the top of what they will pay. 

Those monthly fees are more than enough to pay our expenses for those months. 

In March spring break season begins, but I've found over the years that the first week of March most often does not rent, and the second week is iffy. So, now, if I have a snowbird that wants to stay into March I will rent the March nights (up to the 2nd Saturday in March) for the prorated February nightly rate.

I hope this helps! Best of luck!

Hi Joe,

You are looking for me!  :-)

I posted a blog post here on BP a while back about the management options for short term rentals, including a service like mine. You can read it below:

Short Term Rentals: Property/Booking Management Options

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

Best of luck! .

In 2012 we purchased a 2 BR/2 BA condo in Dillon (Summit County). Dillon is central to 5 ski resorts within 15-20 minutes (Keystone, Breckenridge Resort, Copper Mountain, Arapahoe Ski Basin & Loveland). It has been a good investment for us, but of course since then the market values have been increasing and inventory is low. If we had to purchase the same condo today it might not be as good aninvestment for those reasons. However, this location is definitely less expensive than Breckenridge so if you can find the right property it could still work.

If you are looking for a very good property management company in Destin consider Sugar Palm Vacation Rentals. The owners of the company are also owners of short term rental properties themselves AND they both are former employees of VRBO/Homeaway. Their background and experience is impeccable! 

We've done this to the house that we own in Lynchburg, VA It is a split level floor plan with an exterior door on the front of the house as well as one on the side of the house (leading into the downstairs level).

The house can be rented as an entire 4 BR/2 BA property, or individually as a 2 BR/1 BA apartment(s), each with its own exterior entrance.

There is a door at the bottom of the entry stairs leading downstairs that can be locked to separate the two levels. We bought a lock like this one (or this one) for that door. It cannot be opened from either side unless the guest has the code. (We only give the code to guests who rent the entire house.)

Surprisingly we found that the whole house rented more often than either apartment. We also found that the downstairs apartment rented more often than the upstairs apartment. The downstairs apartment is cheaper since the full kitchen is upstairs. We installed a microwave, coffee maker and small refrigerator in the downstairs apartment, similar to what you'd find in a hotel room. (Most of our guests come over the weekend and don't plan on cooking much.)

Best of luck! 

You might want to check into the rules in your area regarding professional property management. 

I found when I was creating my STR booking management service in CO that unless I had a Broker's license I could NOT receive the funds from my client's bookings first and then disburse them to the owner like most property managers do.

Since I do not have a Broker's license all of my clients' booking payments go directly to them. I send my clients an invoice at the end of each month for them to pay my commission.

Hi Mark,

I use OwnerRez and I love, love, love it! I use it to manage 15 properties that I either own or manage for other clients. It has everything I need to smoothly and professionally manage our bookings.

On OwnerRez, they have a setting that allows you to choose to add or subtract a percentage amount from either just rent or rent plus fees. This means you can have your "regular" rates on your own website's listing and whatever channels you choose but also have a higher (or lower) rate on a different channel. This option is only available if you use the API to integrate your OwnerRez account with your OTA listings.

OwnerRez can integrate with the following OTAs currently. Booking.com is one of them so the good news is you can add the 15% increase for that channel to account for their (outrageous in my opinion) commission.

Homeaway
Booking.com
FloridaRentals.com
Hometogo
Houfy
Smoky Mountains.com
TripAdvisor

I especially love how great the customer support is at OwnerRez. .

We own a STR home in San Diego, but ultimately have taken a long term lease to help us get through this COVID-19 situation. Hopefully by the time this tenant leaves things will be "back to normal" and we can go back to our original plan of offering the property on the short term rental market. (That is, IF we still have a STR license by then....if things go as planned the City of San Diego will be cutting the STR licenses by 75%. Hopefully we'll be one of the lucky few who gets to keep their STR license.)

Anyway, we always tell our guests "If for any reason we are not able to provide the property to you for your stay as contracted we would refund your payment in full. Otherwise, our usual cancellation policy applies."

In this situation, you are NOT able to provide the property as contracted (due to the executive order restriction on STRs). So, in my opinion you should contact Airbnb, provide them a link or a copy of the Executive order and ask them to refund the guest IN FULL including the Airbnb commission that the guest paid for the booking. They will do it, under their Extenuating Circumstances policy, as long as you provide the documentation showing the restriction that results in the cancellation.

While I agree with @Joe C. ("People making reservations after April 1st 2020 know full well what they are doing with regard to COVID-19. We've been told things will get worse in winter all summer long, it is not a surprise to anyone.") this particular situation is beyond the guest's control. The guest may well WANT to keep their booking, they are not the ones asking for the cancellation. 

If the host is the one who must cancel the booking then it should be refunded in full.

We self-insure by charging a non-refundable $59 Damage Waiver fee. It covers up to $1000 of accidental damage. 

The good part of this is that WE get to decide what is accidental and what was caused by negligence (if they break the terms of our rental agreement by having pets, smoking, having a party, etc.) We are not at the mercy of an insurance company's decision of whether to pay a claim or deny coverage because the damage was not accidental (in their opinion).

If there is accidental damage less than $1000 it is a better conversation to have with the guest when we can say "Don't worry about it, accidents happen and this is covered by the damage waiver fee that you paid" than to try to collect the expense from them to cover the damage.

Since 2016 we've never had any accidental damage that exceeded $1000....$300 is the most we've had (a broken TV). Other "damage" that we've had to use funds from this account to pay for were small things like a new coffee pot (when the lid was melted in the dishwasher), a new set of sheets that were damaged by a wet bathing suit bleeding red dye, and a new twin mattress when a special needs child accidentally wet the bed.

We've collected about $34,000 in damage wavier fees by now.