What's important to ask a PM for STR

[Daniel Anshus]

So my business partner and I @Bjorik Mutize operate a local real estate meet-up in Minneapolis and I was contacted by a company that specializes in short term rentals. I have no experience in these besides reading these forums and a few podcasts. My questions are; what percentage is typical for a one stop shop to charge, what would you expect from a company that is a 1 stop shop, would you use a pm company that is not local to where your rentals are? Please mention anything else that would be important when considering a pm for your str.

Thank you all!

[Benjamin Vail]

We are a STR management company, and we charge 25% of booking revenue for end-to-end service. I love to read the messages from @Luke Carl and @John Underwood and @Ken Latchers about STR PM companies “are all a wast of money”. I am now managing 40 houses for other clients, and they are all making about 2x the revenue they were before we took it over (even after the 25% MF). 

Let me tell you about our client who has a $250,000 house in Columbus. He started it as an Airbnb, and was getting decent bookings on the weekend, and 1 or 2 week nights here and there. He was bringing in about $1500/month, and about to quit. We took over the management in February. We implemented several changes, and added our pricing knowledge. In May we were able to bring in a total of $6500 for him on that house. We are now currently hosting a large family while they work in town, for a 45 night stay. They paid $13,400 for that 6 week stay. That is the difference of having a professional company in the cockpit of your STR.

If you don't know anything about how to properly price or run your STR, then let a professional do it who can bring you way more money. Everyone gets so caught up on "how much the PM company charges", but what they should really be focused on is how much more money the owner will actually make at the end of the month on that same unit (with way less headache of learning how to do it).