Air conditioning in unoccupied STRs?

[Paul Sandhu]

There was a construction crew that rented 7 of my houses/apartments.  They've been here about 6 weeks, and now they have a week off.  They all went home and are coming back in 5 days.  Would you leave the air conditioning on when they are gone, or would you turn it off and turn it back on the day they are supposed to arrive?  Their job is supposed to continue until the end of this year, so there is plenty more rent to be collected.  About $2500/week for all their places.

Leaving it on = higher electric bill.

Turning it off = house gets hot and the air conditioner freezes because it's overworked.

[Mike McCarthy]

@Paul Sandhu I usually set the AC to 78 or 80 when I go out of town. As long as the evenings are somewhat cool, it’ll never go on. But if it does start getting too hot, it’ll let it reasonable.

But I do it more for the humidity. The house doesn’t really care if it’s hot, but keeping the humidity down to reasonable levels is a good plan