All Forum Posts by: Jake Miller

Agreed 100% I would focus more on substance then upgrades that a home owner would care more about

That's an interesting perspective, I would actually be curious to dig into that more as from my experience the owners I've talked to charge the same amount per cleaning as they pay, and for my own personal experience it is the same, anecdotal as it is. It would be interesting to see what percentage are taking a hit on the cleanings, I would imagine smaller spaces and overly large spaces. But then one could simply factor that into their daily rates to hide it and compensate for not charging as much of a cleaning fee.

Yes you want a thorough clean, it should be like a hotel, however, nobody is talking about hiring illegals or only paying 20hr, but four hours for a 1,200 sqft place? With a deep clean after every guest? honestly I feel like you're throwing away money at that point, you can schedule a deep clean once a month for each room and save yourself the money, perhaps your house is out in boonies or on the beach and tracks in a lot of sand and mud but it really seems like you're throwing away money.

I use to clean my own vacation rentals before I hired it out, and if you're actually moving you should be able to get 1,200 sqft done in 2-3hours. What you charge for cleaning doesn't need to be the price of $100 bucks obviously there is different pricing for different needs, perhaps your 1,200 sqft simply has a lot of demands for attention, this is something I also keep in mind when I'm building my vacation rental, how much time will this add to my cleaning crews, and where can I help them save time.

Also it's pretty clear my comment was hyperbole, pertaining to scrub and change sheets, There is more to it, but the reality is it should be setup in a time efficient way so the most critical items of a vacation rental are attained with each turnover for example a guest will typically be much more attentive to the bathrooms and kitchen area so in my checklist I have a lot of extra things that are done in those sections of the home.. then you can book a separate deep clean for the long term dirt that accumulates over time throughout the house, once a month or once every couple of months, you'll save yourself time and money this way in my experience.

If we want to get pedantic we'll obviously be counting it as revenue, however, that's not the point I'm getting at, and one I would hope people would obviously understand not to focus on. The point being is, cleaning costs only arise when you're making money, it's not some sort of fixed debt that will be there when you're not getting bookings. The need only arises when your customer books the home, and that need is then paid for by that same customer. It shouldn't be cutting into your margins... In comparison to a mortgage or your utility bills or property taxes which will always be there...

"beyond having paid cash for your property"... obviously

Sounds like you may need to find a different cleaner then, in my experience I tell the cleaners what I pay and how long it will take them between flips, if they want it good, if not I move on to someone that's motivated to get it done. I definitely don't talk to cleaning companies that advertise themselves as "vacation rental cleaning companies" reason being is they're no different than a Property Management company thinking they can gauge you because it's a vacation home.

For example one of my units is a 4 bedroom 2 bath 2000sqft home, I have my own cleaning crews that I pay 100 to clean in three hours time, that comes out to 33$perhr. Now for pure interest I called two separate cleaning crews who advertised themselves as "vacation rental cleaning specialists" and they quoted me 300 per cleaning, which is just insane.

Cleaning is cleaning folks, whether it's a vacation home or not we're talking about changing sheets and scrubbing floors. Attention to detail is the only distinguishable characteristic one generally needs to do the job, their is no degree behind it or general skill that takes one years to learn to limit the labor force to allow them to price gauge.

Same thing for lawn maintenance, I call the big companies and they quote me 40 bucks per mow, I call a handyman and he quotes me 20bucks per mow... mowing is mowing folks, there is no degree or distinguishable reason to mark up the price beyond what it is.

Old thread but I have looked into Leavenworth, seemed like from my research on the area it was mainly just weekend getaways, not much bookings happening through the mid-week, but this was a few years back and it's possible I was looking through their bookings at the wrong part of the season.

Both are very key to keep in mind.

I think one thing you can do to try and hedge with Number 2, is keep your expenses within the realm that if the vacation market tanks you could still hypothetically rent out your house long term and cover your expenses on the home. This way you keep a safety net incase things go south.

As well as that you don't necessarily have to keep your vacation rental running year round, you could very easily just rent out your home four months or however long you believe your vacation market to be and then rent it out long term furnished for the remainder of the year. This way you're not banking on having a huge hot-season booking list and enough through the slow season to keep afloat.

Yes, but those shouldn't be calculated as expected revenue or a debt. It's merely an opportunity at bonus revenue if you deem the opportunity cost to be worth it, and it can't be considered a cost to the margin as it should already be factored into the guest paying for it. The only way it would hurt your margin is if you decide to not have the guests pay for it, or perhaps you end up paying your cleaning crew more then what you're charging.

You shouldn't... you should be charging a cleaning fee to begin with, I agree with your mindset of understanding it's a business, and because of that the costs of business are passed on to the consumer. Cleaning Fee should be covering not only your interior cleaning but if you have a yard that needs to be maintained you need to factor that into what you charge the guests.

I've looked at them, I don't use them though. Airbnb already has a feature pretty similar to that built into their system. I don't find airbnbs auto-pricing to be accurate at all and it frequently quotes rates for me more than half of what I know I'm able to fetch for my place.

I would say this is probably because I would imagine it would be hard to code a system that takes into account quality of amenities, true location, size, and unique features.

What both systems likely do is just dig through all the listings of homes that are around the same bedroom and bathroom size and then give you a price based on the average of those homes, but that leaves so many important factors out of the equation such as the quality of the house, the true location of the house to tourist attractions in the area, quality of amenities, unique amenities and the houses reputation through reviews.

I think the tried and true way to accurately price your home is to simply dig through the listings and find houses that truly reflect and in accuray to your own house, see how much they're booking for through the listings calendar and then price your home similarly to theirs.