Palm Springs Vacation Rental Management

[Mike G.]

I am closing this week on my first property, which I will use for short term rentals in Palm Springs. I have done pretty extensive research on what to expect with city regulations and have used a lot of online tools to project returns. But I haven't been able to find much conversation in forums about owners' experience with property management companies. Does anyone have any advice on which property management company to use in Palm Springs?

- The property already has a housekeeper, pool maintenance guy, gardener and handyman who know the home. Is it really worth paying a 25%+ fee for things like marketing, guest checkins and noise control? I live in NY and want the property to run on autopilot as much as possible, so peace of mind is important to me.

- It's a large 4 bed/4bath home on a golf course with a pool in one of the best neighborhoods, so I also want to protect my investment and make sure that it isn't being used for huge parties. Will a smaller boutique management company offer more value, or will I end just up dealing with more issues remotely?

Thank you in advance for any insights. 

[Ken Latchers]

It only sounds valuable because you do not understand the reality  of good self management. Property managers are little more than leeches on your Revenue. You sound impressive because you do not understand what you need to do to succeed. Which is:

1) read this forum thoroughly
2) Get on ALL the real booking sites: booking.dom, airbnb, FlipKey, vrbo.
3) subscribe to a good pms like smoobu or ownerreservations.com to manage those
4) use a dynamic pricer like pricelabs or beyond pricing. 3) can work that in also
5) use the website feature in 3) to easily make your own website to capture direct bookings.
6) do automation like smartlocks
7) get good cleaners and handyman



Originally posted by @Mike G.:

@John Underwood The real benefit of the property management companies (as far as I can tell) is marketing across a wide network of different vacation rental hosting sites in addition to VRBO and AirBNB. One company that I'm interviewing gets 40% of their booking directly from repeat travelers. So I'm willing to pay the management fee if a company were to bring in an extra $30-40K in rentals per year. Just hard to know if the marketing really brings in more renters.