All Forum Posts by: Valerie Rogers

Hi @Karen Chenaille, I am a fairly new-ish user of OwnerRez and so far am loving it. I'm considering the QB integration....I'd be starting from scratch. I'd love to see the screenshot of one of your reports and any other advice/suggestions you could share about getting started.

Why does BP cut off the last few words of every post I write? Even if I edit the post, the words are cut off from the end of the sentence. Uggh! (Maybe I need to keep adding nonsense to the end of my posts just so that all of the words that I wanted to say are visible before the cut off.).  word.  word.  word. 

Hi @Matthew Sloan, congratulations on the purchase of your PCB condo! My husband & I own 3 condos (in the same building) just west of you on Okaloosa Island. We love our beach condos! 

I used to work for VRBO (when the original founders still owned it....I call those "the good old days".) :-) After they sold the company to Homeaway I continued my career with Homeaway until 2013 (before they sold to Expedia). One of the first responsibilities the owners of VRBO gave to me when I began to work with them was the management of their STR condo in Maui, HI. So, you could say I learned how to manage a STR property from a long distance from the industry leaders.

We live in Denver, CO. Our first STR was in Summit County, CO about 90 miles from where we live. Then over the next 6 years we purchased the 3 condos in Fort Walton Beach, a house in Lynchburg, VA and most recently a house in San Diego. All of our purchases (except the 2nd & 3rd beach condos) were chosen because these are places we love to spend time and expect to spend more time after we retire.

In my opinion the key to success is to find a good housekeeper; you can't be successful without one. It is so important to me that my housekeeper does a good job and pays attention to the details that every time I receive a review from a guest that mentions how clean they found the property when they arrived I give my housekeeper a $20 bonus. It shows them how much I appreciate the good work that they do.

Self-managing is the most profitable way to go, if you have the time and the temperament for it. If you don't have the time, consider hiring a booking management company; they will handle all of the advertisement listings, inquiries, bookings, communications with guests, etc. while you take care of the property maintenance. 

You already have a full-service property manager: the most expensive option but the least investment of time on your part.

Whatever you decide, best of

Lucas, I have a question about this.

I know how to get the "export calendar" URL from the listing sites, but not how to add it to the google calendar. I don't really want to create a separate Gmail account for the housekeeper, instead I want to create a calendar in my account & share it with them.

It seems that after logging onto my Gmail account and opening up the calendar I can either:

1) Settings > Add calendar > Create new calendar

OR

2) Settings > Add Calendar > From URL

At first, I used "From URL" and pasted the ics URL there. Thinking that after the calendar was created I would be able to share the calendar with particular people, I chose not to check the box next to: "Make the calendar publicly accessible". 

But I found after the calendar was created that there is no way to share it with anyone. That option only seems to be available if you use the first option ("Create new calendar").

So I thought, well, ok, I'll create a new calendar. But after I did, I could not find a way to import the ics URL to the new calendar.

I'm stumped. Any

If that was my property/location I think I would convert the 4th bedroom (that you have to go through the kitchen and down a hall to get to a bathroom) into some other kind of a room besides a bedroom. Make your house a 3 BR/1.5 bath home with a bonus game room, ping-pong table room, man-cave, theater room.....you get the idea. Reduce the number of people staying in the house (easier wear & tear) and less fighting for bathroom

@Rob Black, congratulations to you & your wife on your new purchase! Sounds like a sweet set up for STR!

Seems to me you have 4 options:

1) Want to be completely hands off? Hire a local full-service property manager to handle the property maintenance, the housekeeping, the inquires, bookings, contacts from guests & advertisements. You'll pay a hefty commission but it takes 0 of your time.

2) Make a deal with the current Airbnb Superhost to continue managing the building. (Does this include all of the things I mentioned above, such as housekeeping and property maintenance, or just the bookings?) Sounds like you'll make some money without much of a time investment. Instead of paying a property manager the SuperHost will pay you a share. A better option than #1.

3) Hire a "booking management" service to handle all of the time-consuming things like the inquires, bookings, contacts from guests & advertisements. You'll pay much less of a commission but it does involve some of your time if something comes up like a maintenance issue at the property. This is better than #1 & #2 because you'll probably make more money than the share that the SuperHost is willing to pay you.

4) Do it all yourself! This takes the most amount of your time but also costs the least and you pocket 100% of the money. This is the best option if you have the time for it.

My husband & I purchased a "flip home" in the Golden Hill neighborhood of San Diego in August. The guys who flipped the home installed a 2nd kitchen so that it could be rented as a 2 BR/2 BA home or two 1 BR/1 BA apartments. We've only been "on the market" for a couple of months so we'll see how it goes. (We wanted a place for us to be able to stay in San Diego when we come to visit our son, his wife and our new granddaughter, which is as often as possible!)

Best wishes on your new endeavor, whatever you

I've tested using Tokeet and Reservation Key (each for one year), and have just made the switch to OwnerRez. I tried Tokeet  because of the affordable price for a small operator, but it was too limiting. ReservationKey was much better, but was kind of "buggy" and when I would write for help from Support they were responsive but often the burden was put upon me to create test bookings and try to troubleshoot the issue on my own.

OwnerRez is so flexible & robust and so far (about 2 months in) I am really liking the product. 

This is the first system I've used to integrate with my Airbnb & VRBO account, which streamlines the process of managing so many listings. (I have 10 listings on each site of my own plus I manage bookings for a number of other properties also, most of which also have Airbnb & VRBO listings....very time-consuming to manually manage so many listings.)

One of the unexpected happy surprises I found after the VRBO integration was that my listings are not using their payment processing system; when a guest books on VRBO they take their service fee and then pass the guest's payment information and payments directly to me. So...no "check-in" payments for me! The guests' payments are deposited into my bank account within a few business days after they make the payment.

This was a "happy surprise" because I was very concerned about the Terms & Conditions on VRBO's new payment system, namely the one that says by using their payments systemthe listing owner "agrees" to allow VRBO to refund any guest who contacts them within 24 hours of Check-in and reports that the property is not "as is described" or "for any other reason". I was not worried about anyone complaining that my properties are not "as is described", but I WAS worried about the vague and generic "for any other reason" clause. 

Now that my payments are not being processed through their payment system I no longer have to worry about VRBO arbitrarily deciding to issue refunds to guest who might complain to them "for any other reason". 

:-)

 While this is true, just keep in mind that Evolve owns "your" listing, the information on the listing, the photos on the listing and the REVIEWS on the listing. If you ever decide to cut ties with them you'll have to start over from scratch with a new listing and no reviews.

Mike Neubauer

See my response to Kevin (above) re: my experience with Reservation