All Forum Posts by: Valerie Rogers

I always get a signed rental agreement no matter where the booking came from. I would rather have that protection than be at the mercy of Airbnb to decide if they should cover damage done by their guests.

I do have a different rental agreement that I use for Airbnb bookings simply because the cancellation policy that I have to use on their site is different than what I use everywhere else. So the Airbnb version includes the Airbnb cancellation policy and the other versions include my normal cancellation policy.

We put this in our Airbnb House Rules:

Minimum age requirement to rent: 25 years
Guest must be willing to provide a copy of a valid ID
Guest must be willing to sign a copy of our rental agreement

I also copy & paste the ENTIRE contents of our rental agreement in the "Additional rules" field.

I never have a complaint from a VRBO guest about these requirements. I occasionally do get push back from Airbnb users.

<heaving a self-satisfied sigh>.....I always knew VRBO was the dominant site. It was hard trying to swallow all of the Homeaway hype after they purchased the VRBO that I worked for in 2006.

@Mindy Jensen, the information on the link below is what I was trying to share:

https://docs.google.com/docume...

Hi Anand,

I don't know why your county still hasn't been approved to reopen STRs, but I do see that it is not on the "approved" county list:

http://www.myfloridalicense.co...

 I'm so sorry! I know how frustrating and financially scary it is not to be able to take bookings for your property. I hope they open your county soon. 

Since I am receiving the error below from the BP website that won't allow my post to be published (even though there are no telephone numbers or email addresses in my post), if you are interested in reading the post please CLICK THIS LINK.

Hopefully a BP moderator will see this post and help me get the actual post published on this site instead of as an external link.  

@John Underwood

Thanks for the suggestion. No good though, still can't post it without the links.

I thought maybe their robot was thinking "Covid-19" was a phone number so I changed all of those instances to "Coronavirus" but still no luck.

I'm hoping a moderator will see this report and contact me to help me get the post published.

Well good news! Okaloosa County & Escambia County plans among others have been approved! See this list.

Sorry, gotta go! Need to open up my calendars & listings and start taking bookings!

:-)

We own 3 condos in the same small building on Okaloosa Island (Fort Walton Beach FL, Okaloosa County). These condos are half of our STR portfolio and have been our best performing units.

Like everyone else, we've taken an incredible financial hit with Covid-19 since March and were hoping our FL condo summer bookings would save our year. 

Yet, the ban drags on.....

I've generally been impressed with Governor DeSantis' handling of the crisis but no more. He never mentioned STRs in his press conference last Friday despite the fact that the crescendo of pleas to open STRs has been growing over the past two weeks. I know that Mayors and County Commissioners have been sending letters and emails to his office for weeks and not one received a response from his office. 

And then Friday, a reporter brought up the subject of the STR ban and the Governor off-handedly mentioned that counties can submit their plans to the DBPR for review & approval.

Huh???

Did his office EVER respond to the communications sent by the Mayors & Commissioners with this information? No. No one even knew this was the course of action until he threw it out as an off-handed remark at the end of a press conference.

It was not until late Friday evening that Executive Order 20-123 was posted with the information.

While I hope this is a sincere offer for Counties to submit a plan to safely reopen STRs in their counties I suspect it is just a stalling tactic.

Multiple counties have submitted their plans beginning Friday and over the weekend and yesterday, yet not one has been approved. You can see a list on the link below that is supposed to show the Counties and the status of their application, yet the form is blank:

http://www.myfloridalicense.co...

I've been trying to post a "New Discussion" about what steps we are taking to prepare for re-opening but having no luck (see my report here). When I am able to successully post that topic I will. 

An error prevented this Topic from being saved

Please check the following:

• Posts base Posting contact details such as phone numbers or email addresses outside the Marketplace is prohibited.

I'm trying to post a new topic that does NOT include any phone numbers or email addresses, yet I keep receiving this error message. Has anyone encountered this before and how did you figure out what the culprit was?

My post contains "Covid-19" and links to things, but no contact info.

Thanks for any insight you can