Purchasing a STR with future bookings on AirBnB

[Jennifer Bryan]

I am purchasing a turn-key completely furnished and stocked short term rental that I will continue to operate as a STR after purchase. The seller has the property listed on Airbnb and there are multiple bookings in the coming months. Does anyone have experience with this type of situation? Do the bookings transfer over to me somehow upon closing? Does the seller cancel the bookings on their account?

[Joey Morea]

@Jennifer Bryan

It’s a pain I had to do this on my last purchase. The only way it can be done is previous owner has to cancel and then you can request to rebook. I had people with flights booked so imagine the worry when they saw your house was just canceled the day before their trip after 10 months of having it reserved. The prior owner actually gave me his login and I canceled on his side and request to rebook from my account. All of them rebooked. It was a bit scary for some of them with the refunds of credit cards taking a few days to process to trust the process. It made sense to keep the bookings as we closed in June and all of Summer calendar was already full vs hoping to get last minute bookings, plus I also thought it was the right thing to do. People plan for a while to do a big trip to Disney in a 7br home. I also honored all the prior booking prices.