All Forum Posts by: Carolyn Fuller

@Dina Dinakaran It totally depends upon the location of your rental. If you are near universities, I recommend the university off-campus housing website and

Sabbatical Homes. Those are the only sites I use for my MTRs. I use Airbnb for STR.

To add to what Bonnie is saying... In my town, the discussions went on for a year and the direction of the policies were pretty consistently supported by the entire council. Then election season began and all of a sudden, everything went south. A councillor used STRs as an election year battle cry and turned the entire process topsy turvy. The policies that had been discussed for a year were ultimately passed but it was by a super slim margin. 

If you are planning for both MTR and STR and are able to pivot to 100% MTR if things go south, you should stick with this city. I don't know of a city that regulates against MTRs. If you were to switch locations, I would recommend a location that has already dealt with STRs. They are much less likely to change the rules on you. The locations that haven't dealt with STRs can, and probably will, in the future.

 I agree with you that the city is more likely to know than the staff at VRBO or even Airbnb. The laws vary from city to city and state to state. It is complex but Airbnb seems much more on top of it than VRBO. I think the reality is that Airbnb is a larger company with a larger IT department so their software is more sophisticated and they have the staff to make software changes in a timely fashion to meet state and local laws.

I would not be surprised if this isn't determined state by state. Massachusetts requires that *all* STR platforms collect both city and state STR occupancy taxes and remit them to the state monthly. The state then sends the city portion back to the city. The hosts don't need to do anything. When the law was first implemented, VRBO was behind schedule and for the first month, I had to collect and remit the city & state occupancy taxes for my VRBO bookings. It was a pain in the neck and one of the many reasons I decided to drop my listings from VRBO.

My STR was designed to appeal to a large audience so I can't speak to the STR market but I suspect that it is not all that different from the MTR market. We have an MTR unit that we designed to meet our unique dream unit and the niche audience of like minded people LOVE it. Everyone seems to be ready to pay premium price for it but some people truly love it which is very satisfying. I have to say, managing this uniquely designed unit is so much more fun than managing the one designed for the mass market.

I definitely use a dresser when I travel and I expect to find one when I book an Airbnb. I hate trying to live out of my suitcase.

 Yes. We legally rent out an in-law suite attached to our Cambridge home. 

I charge enough in monthly rent that I don't worry about what the monthly utility bill is. I have some tenants who use next to no utilities and some tenants who use an astronomical amount of utilities. It all averages out. 

I was away in Europe for a month and I did run into an issue. There was a thunder storm back home that completely wiped out the internet modem. Fortunately, we had a very close friend who literally spent a week working with Comcast to resolve the issue. And when I say a week, I mean 8 hour days for 7 days before Comcast figured out that the modem was fried! I would never have asked anyone to go through that nightmare and I can't believe this friend did that for us!

Our Airbnb guest was not happy and I had to give them $100 refund to placate them. 

Also, this same Airbnb guest attempted to put up a party tent in our tiny urban backyard/garden to host a graduation party for her daughter. We had paid someone who was living in the building to be the STR co-host in our absence but she wasn't paying attention when the guest called in the tent supply company. Fortunately, the company told the guest that there wasn't enough space in the garden to install the tent. It would have destroyed our garden.

I think the big issue for people who are self managing an STR in the building where they live, is that we don't have proven reliable boots on the ground to handle the inevitable issues that arise. We are the boots! And when we leave town Murphy's Law kicks in and the newly anointed, unproven co-host we have selected is unable to actually do the work that is required.

My husband and I now plan our week+ travel for times when we aren't listing our unit for short term vacationers. That means any month+ travel happens when we have a mid term tenant. We have plenty of time for these tenants to know us and for us to know them. For any week+ travel, we will create a special STR rental period that starts before we leave town and covers the period we will be out of town. Again that gives us time to meet the guest. When a guest meets the host, they are much less likely to "break the rules," especially if the host lives on the property. We also make sure there is someone local who will take care of minor issues if they arise and we attempt to ensure that no major issues arise. That is, we now make sure the modem and router and nodes are all on reliable surge protectors.