All Forum Posts by: Paul Cox

Do they have references that you can call. That's how we hired our cleaning staff. Referred to us by both our realtor and our lender who are also investors in our area. They have been a Godsend for us on our 1st STR and we'll continue to use them for our next one as well. Best of luck!

Here's what I replied to a couple of our booked guests that asked the question about Covid-19 cancellations:

The question was:

What is your refund policy regarding the pandemic, such as stay at home orders being reissued or illness with Covid-19?

My Reply was:

If the Governor issues a stay at home order, or if the local officials issue the same or request people to stay away as was done back in March-April, then we will comply with that order. Anybody that is booked during that time frame will receive a refund. Obviously the pandemic is no longer a surprise, so AirBnB is honoring the cancellation policies of the hosts as of today. During this time, I definitely recommend guests look at trip insurance if its available. Our cancellation policy is set to strict, so make sure you're comfortable with that before booking. We wish you well and hope we get the opportunity to host you. Just let us know.

During Mar - May we refunded a lot of bookings 100%, but outside of our shutdown in April, most of those days were rebooked and for more money. Good Karma :)

Paul

Hi @Nicole Vincent

I'm a newbie when it comes to STRs, but jumped in with both feet after some long discussions with Avery and Luke Carl. I still don't have a spreadsheet or really any clue on how best to analyze a STR property, so if others are willing to share, I may borrow it as well :) I just know that we bought our cabin back in November and we haven't regretted it one bit. In fact we're looking at getting our second property either there in the Pigeon Forge area or the Branson, MO area here in the next couple of months. I am anxious to see what our first year rounds out to be. Best of luck to you. We love the Smokies!

Paul

@Brian G.

It's been working great, though I've had to replace the batteries every couple of months. The app gives us a heads up that they're getting low and then I have my cleaners replace them.  Looking at getting one on my primary residence.

Funny that this topic just came up as I just received a message from our current guests that stated the following:

Paul, the more we looked around the more things just were a little off with the cleaning. There was a milky substance spilled in the fridge, some dirty pans and dishes in the cabinets (I just put everything in and ran a load), my girls found an old spilled McDonalds cup under the nightstand upstairs and I pulled a water bottle cap from under the sheets when I crawled into bed last night. I’m not one who likes to complain, please don’t get me wrong, but these are a lot of little things here. Coupled with the knowledge that your crew was pressed for time yesterday I’m getting the sense they just didn’t do a very thorough job. At this point we’ve gone ahead and cleaned everything ourselves and we are happy with the place and all but I feel we should be compensated in some way, but I’d like to hear your thoughts as well.

My Response to him was this:

Thanks for letting me know. I do not see it as complaining. You guys are paying a good deal of money for your stay, and you shouldn't have to be worried about little issues when it comes to the cleanliness of the cabin. Can you tell me again where you found the sock and the hair tie yesterday. I want to make sure I point all this out to our cleaning staff.

I'm really sorry you've had these issues as we have really taken a lot of pride in the cleanliness of our cabin. What I'd like to do is refund your cleaning fee for the visit. I will check to see if I can do that through AirBnB. If I can't, if you have a PayPal account, I will refund it to you that way.

Thank you for letting me know

I then sent all that to my cleaners asking for their thoughts...What's happened is our cleaning staff is growing and the couple we hired and have the relationship with have their sub cleaners which did the clean. I'm hoping our cleaners want to make it right with us! 

I'm thinking this may bring us a 4 star on cleanliness...We'll see

All the best

Paul

I pay a flat fee per clean, whether it takes them an hour or two hours or more. We have developed a great relationship with our cleaners, so if they feel they need to be compensated more, I would expect them to tell me. I feel they win far more than they lose on time taken to clean the cabin. If they do something extra for me as far as having to make a stop by the cabin with regards to a maintenance issue, etc. I'll throw an additional $20 their way for the time.  In the end, they are a large part of what helped us to get to super host status twice on AirBnB, so I definitely want to keep them happy!

@Rachael Wood, we live in the Manassas area, a little bit aways from VMI

@Michael Baum, trust me when I say that was one of the better ones we took🙄

And then the one I use for my listing profile photo

Now here's my Professional Photographer's shot