All Forum Posts by: Wilson Vanhook

100% you should ask each guest after checkout. Here’s my template it works like a charm:

Thank you for staying with us at <property_name> <guest_name>! I left a 5-star review in your inbox and hope you will do the same for me. Every 5-star review helps our family business excel. If you had any issues please let me know privately so we can work on it. Also, please favorite my listing as I'd love to host you again next time!

Would buying a property with a DSCR loan be considered a house hack? To me, when you say house hack, that means buying a property as a primary residence with a low down payment, living in it for a year, and then moving out and renting it. Or buying it, living in a room and renting the rest of the rooms out. But if you use a DSCR loan, it's an investment property at that point with 20% down and you just rent it out like any other investment.

If you don’t plan to get more, I’d definitely use Guesty for Hosts. Very straight forward and easy to use. You can automate all the day to day management.

Why are you thinking of switching? What don’t you like? Are you using Guesty for Pros or for Hosts?

@Julie Toh can you elaborate a little? One of our clients has come as a referral from our local realtor in our target market.

We started out as self managers, and quickly fell in love with the STR industry. So we started our own STR property management business last year. Our success has been fantastic is such a short period of time. We've grown from 2 properties up to 15+. We know what we offer to homeowners is extremely valuable, but we want more clients.

I’m looking for new ideas as to how I could get more clients. Referrals have been our best avenue to new clients so far, but that’s kinda slow and we can’t really control the pace of that. We’re using other long term tactics to get our name out there more like building a social media presence. But for a real go-getter like myself that wants to get the best value for my time and get new clients right now, what’s the best approach?

For more context, we offer both property management and cohosting. Property management is more for our markets in Oklahoma and Texas, but we’re trying to expand into new vacation rental markets. Cohosting we can offer nationwide and we have properties all the way up in Maine under this model.

Drop me some new ideas so I can get after it TODAY and find some new clients!

 Where did you read Airbnb is discouraging property management companies in their algorithm? I’m interested in hearing more about this.

Don’t call Airbnb support. Send them the request for review removal through a chat message. When you call, the agent always “takes notes” and I swear they never write down the proper wording to get it removed once they escalate the case.

So send Airbnb support a message. State that you would like the review removed. State that they broke your house rules by smoking weed, and that per Airbnb guidelines the review should be removed. It may or may not get taken down.

If it doesn’t get taken down, try the same thing a few weeks later and keep trying. Eventually the right person will get on the case and remove the review. I had one recently taken down on my 4th attempt. In the future, always try to find a way they broke your house rules and state it in your initial message.

Do it! Take the leap! 100% you're capable of managing your own STR. The biggest thing is learning the ropes of what it takes to create a captivating listing, and how to effectively use a dynamic pricing strategy. If you feel you have the time to spend to learn those things properly you can definitely self manage. Otherwise you may want to at least look into getting a cohost. I own a management company and we only charge 10% for cohosting which is much more affordable than what you stated. Idk what other cohosts are charging, probably anywhere from 10-15% for somebody reasonable.

But again, if you spend the time to learn the ropes yourself you can self manage! Just make sure you’re committed to educating yourself.

Houston is not a good market for Airbnb.