All Forum Posts by: Rob Anteau

Yes you will want to do instant-book on both airbnb and vrbo. It makes your life easier. You have to manage it though. It gives you options. Caveats. Choose the ones you like and keep an eye on things. ALSO you can cancel up to 3 instant books per year penalty free. Today is the last day before that resets so get to canceling lol.

I think the instant-book-off and the lack-of-parties -was a coincidence. There are plenty of old boring people using instant-book. In other words turning it off is not going to be a filter for Miller Lite.

In order to get rid of the parties you have to make yourself more clear. It's exactly like LTR. If you don't want someone under 600 credit, you don't take anyone under 600 credit. Simply tweak your listing and your messages to make it VERY CLEAR parties are not allowed at your property. In fact I wouldn't even use the word party. "this is a quiet family property" something like that. VERY FIRM.

Just one mans opinion.

 Understand!

I live in Charlotte Andy in-laws are in NE Ohio and we have considered doing the same thing as you.

Our local STR is on High Rock Lake.

One other thought... When we purchased our STR in Florida (we live in MN). We brought care packages to all of our neighbors. We invite them over for beers every time we visit. We stay in touch with them & try to hire our neighbors whenever possible. Could you befriend a neighbor & possibly pay their teenager or someone else to do small tasks?

It helps to have an advocate locally when you are not! 

Like every has already said, cleaners and local handyman.

We manage semi-remote (approximately 45-60 mins away).  Close enough to do short notice repairs myself if necessary, but too far to take out the trash.

Where are you located and where are you looking to invest?
T

 Same here, used local Facebook groups to find our errand runners. You’ll never need local property management services as long as you have your own cleaners, Handyman, and optionally a good errand runner/Taskrabbit/caretaker for the little things.

Then hire an offshore virtual assistant to manage and schedule everything, and you have yourself some easy passive income 😊😊

We use a combination of our handyman and an errand runner for small tasks.

We do not have Task Rabbit in the area our rental is located. We connected with our errand runner over Instagram. She's been great and to our surprise, she has a hospitality background so that has been a great fit. You could Google search "errand service Charlotte, NC" and locate someone. 

Trash - Usually, our cleaners are coming in the day before trash pickup so we have them bring the cans out to the curb. Then we schedule our errand runner to bring trash cans in and perform a quality check on the property the next day, after cleaning. This has worked out very well for us and quality control.

Our cleaning fee is $200. 

$160 goes to the cleaning service and $40 goes to the Errand Runner.