All Forum Posts by: Cliff H.

No guarantees on reviews, but I know when I first put one of my rentals online and needed that first 5 star review I had a group coming in to celebrate a birthday and absolutely seized the moment. Put out party plates, setup balloons, and a had a custom music playlist with the birthday guest’s name as an over the top birthday welcome. She left one of the most wonderful written reviews I’ve seen. You make the rules so whatever works go for it!

@Brooklyn McCarty contrary to popular belief, age is not a protected class under any federal housing statute.

https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/fair_housing_act_overview

Of course if you look this up on Airbnb, they will tell you that housing laws are complex and they cannot interpret them for you.

However at the same time they have, themselves, implemented a global party ban which places additional requirements for those under the age of 25 due to the reality of increased risk that this and bracket entails:

https://news.airbnb.com/strengthening-our-safety-commitment-to-u-s-hosts-and-communities

So no, requiring guests to be of a certain age is not discrimination, it’s respecting statistics.

25+ here and only after dozens of incidents hosting younger guests and dealing with the fallout. Sorry, but there’s a reason we all paid more in insurance claims when we were younger.

Same question that’s been debated in long term rental markets for years. “Do I buy in my backyard or across the country?”

The difference?

Most investors do not living in close proximity to a top STR market.

Consequently self-limiting yourself to a close investment will only limit your profits and increase risk by forcing you to make exceptions to generally accepted investment criteria.

10,000 miles indeed.

Was following this debate in other places, but a few points of clarification here: 

First, the data screenshot shows only the 15 most-impacted metro markets and uses a 3 month average on May 2022 vs May 2023 revenue per available listing. It's not about bad data, it's about knowing what the data's showing: that specific markets saw 40-50% declines year over year of the available listings in region. 

Why is that so hard to believe? 

Many of us in STR markets for more than the last 12 months know there's more STR inventory than go-forward demand can sustain.

We also know demand's not event distributed across each market, but more like a long tail where disproportionate rewards go to the top listings in any market, making per market averages incredibly misleading. 

Lastly, we also all know AirBnB itself pivoted to boutique and luxury markets exactly one year ago to this data compare with their Summer 2022 release, openly stating it was the the "biggest change to Airbnb in a decade." 

Why do that?

Because as the ones in the best position to see the demand cliff coming, it makes perfect sense to pivot your business to those boutique properties unique to your channel and luxury rentals better insulated from the constraints of average traveler counting more dollars in 2023 than they were in 2022. Are we surprised to there's changes in travel trends in 2023: a year of uncertain economics, corporate cost-cutting, global instability, and high rates versus 2022: travel restrictions dropped and everybody was running for the nearest airplane to GTF out of country?

Post-2022 international travel spike, it's not hard to imagine that a major channel partner making the biggest change to its channel in 10 years to focus on luxury/boutique rentals could certainly impact smaller, undistinguished rentals that flooded the market on the back of the "roaring 2020s." Rentals now seeing significant drop-off in search views (see long tail above) and revenue, which is, potentially, exactly what we are seeing the data above around those busy, long-targeted markets like Phoenix, Austin, or Myrtle Beach. 

This is normal so you'll need to adapt or sell elsewhere. OTA/channel markets are the equivalent of selling your soap at Walmart: if you want their customers and foot traffic you have to play by their rules. Those who don't like the rules should find other places to sell. 

I've had plenty of frustration with GfH as well, but nothing like the messaging delays you call out above. Most of my issues are with failure to sync minimum night stays with Booking.com (apparently that's a manual setting) and repeats failures to properly open rolling availability windows across each of the platforms. 

That said, for the new pricing I'm seeing off their website, I'm not sure I'd be too pleased either. As the "younger sibling" to Guesty for Pros, it's clear there's less revenue in GfH, which has seen little changes since Guesty acquired YourPorter a couple years back. 

All that said, the STR platform manager market's pretty terrible in general. Few solutions have truly mobile apps actually built natively for the platform (iOS or Android) they're serving and most force you to choose between reasonable price OR effective user-first design. GfH with its mobile-first design (albeit dated at this point) felt like at least a compromise between these two constraints.

Hi @David Geiger we have a small complex, but have had really good luck with PayHOA, after an extensive evaluation process with virtually every other HOA management solution out there. Lesser known, but laser focused on the HOA sector. Handles online dues, maintenance/architectural requests, owner messaging, unit violations, budgeting, surveys, document storage, check cashing, and real time bank sync for accounting.

Plus it all works on mobile and the support team actually gets back to you.

Great product, solid team!

Entirely depends on the area. Class A, B, or C property?

PS: anecdotally I’ve also been running a few examples searches in region to see where I stack up versus other listings and a pattern of AirBnB prioritizing either new and/or Superhost listings was abundantly clear. I’d encourage others to follow the equivalent of “Googling themselves” and see how far down they show up in the list. If you’re 2-3 pages down that may explain lower page views YoY.