Here is a quick update on the Lakehouse as people seem a little interested.
I think a lot of people may be interested in what happened during the Pandemic. At first, all of our bookings went away for 2020. As people realized that the only thing you could do was travel to Short Term rentals, the rentals picked back up pretty quickly. Both AirBnB and VRBO touted the cleaning of the houses, so we had to answer some questionnaires, but honestly we were already cleaning up to those standards so less of an issue on our part. 2020 and 2021 both beat our records for stays. And in 2021 we turned our first profit while maintaining a pretty similar personal use. I think there is two factors here, first one is the pandemic drove up demand and the second is that we have been operating long enough to stay high in the rankings. We also refunded people when they canceled even if it was in the window, so we got the trusted badge from VRBO.
Here is our booked days update: 2017=109, 2018=92, 2019=103, 2020=165, 2021=211. I don't think 200 days is going to be the norm moving forward. 150 days is what I am estimating on, but this is due to our good track record and maintaining high in the searches.
The laws have obviously been updated in the time that we have been operating. Luckily, VRBO does a great job of paying all the taxes for us. AirBnB pays most of the taxes, but I have to update them every month for the county taxes. So our pricing is now different between the two platforms.
Our previous management still works great!! We have a great new cleaning crew that we have been working with for the last two years. We have improved our process for bookings, we updated our rental guide and created a video that walks people through the property that we send out immediately on booking (this is currently via email, until both sites get better at sharing videos and welcome guides). We also schedule checkin and checkout emails that have made the whole process pretty automated. Our remote keypad helps in several ways. First, we still use peoples last 4 phone numbers, along with the checkin video, we haven't had any questions on how to get it. Secondly, our cleaning crew has their own code so we know when the do the cleaning. Third, we have a maintenance code for when we need our handy man to help out, also tracking when they come and go. The process takes about 5 minutes to setup after each booking.
Overall we are still very happy with how it is working out, especially with the appreciation in home values.
Now for the weird:
1) Back in 2019, we had a bed bug infestation in one of the bedrooms. We caught it somewhat early, but we had to refund some guests. AirBnB and VRBO are not helpful in this situation. We informed AirBnB because we wanted to fully refund and they suspended our listing until we had a clear check from the Pest Control. They don't help with any of the costs. This all makes sense, they are a transactional platform that assumes no risk for the owners or really the renters. It is still frustrating as it was most likely an AirBnB guest that brought them in, but in the end we are solely responsible.
2) We allow dogs as we bring our dogs to the house. We charge a $50 pet fee, which really goes to the cleaning crew. This is an honesty fee, people have to say that they are bringing dogs or select the fee on the booking site. We have some pretty strict rules around where the dogs can be, only common rooms and not on the furniture. We have child gates on the main living space to help enforce. However, it really is up to the honesty of the people. We have had to clean a few markings in the carpet in the bedrooms. We have had to wash the bed comforters due to wet dog smells. But the kicker was this week, where some animal urinated all over one of our couches and we are probably going to have to replace it. We found out when a renter mentioned the smell, it is very hard to tie it back to a specific person so we are going to eat that cost. Price of remote managing and the cleaning crew either missing it or it got worse over time. We think it is one of our differentiators in the market and we are working towards animal proofing our house. We are going to replace all the carpets with LVP in the winter. This one definitely is causing a pause on continuing the dog friendly listing or we may increase the pet fee to create a pet emergency fund.
3) We have found out that anyone who books for more than a week tends to suck. Every time we do an off season booking for a month, we end up regretting it. One tenant flush a diaper down the toilet. One tenant left the place really dirty and broke a bunch of stuff. They complain when they get charged the security fee and threaten us, even after we explain that it doesn't cover our costs. They assume since they stayed at a reduced rate for a month that they are entitled to wreck the house. The wear and tear from people that stay over a week is pretty significant and we end up paying more in cleaning costs. We have adjusted our rental fees so that you get a 10% discount for a booking of 7 days or greater, but we don't discount anymore than that. It is better to not have it rented and avoid the headache. It will probably rent for the weekend, not as much cash, but not as much headache.
Hope this helps everyone out!!
