All Forum Posts by: Jeff E.

Congrats!!  love the Tahoe area.    Definitely look at cloudbeds & thinkreservations.com, also pricepoint.co  for pricing & akia for guest messaging/automation.

I currently use Guesty for my PMS.  I am currently in talks with Hostaway to move to their platform.  Couple of things I don't like with guesty:

1.  They nickel & dime you for a lot of items.  For instance, for any reservations with VRBO and some 3rd party or direct book reservations, they use their own cc processing which has high fees.  They also have a "reserve" fee in which they collect 10% of every credit card transaction and hold it for 90 days before releasing it back.  I recently had a client book one of my properties with VRBO and I was hit with $150 processing fees, $39 intl card fee plus $386 in reserve fees.   Guest ended up cancelling (within cancellation window) and now I am out about $190 of fees that guesty wont refund along with guesty holding on to $386 for another 90 days before they will release it.

2.  A lot of items are difficult to find on their dashboard and you have to go through multiple menus to find, just not very intuitive sometimes.

3.  I like the hostaway calendar a lot better.  Easier to see pricing, minimum days, etc.  Hostaway also lets you see where holidays fall on the calendar along with allowing you to post special notes on the calendar for special events, etc.

4. Support is not the best on Guesty, they have zero phone support, everything is via email.  they are good about responding to emails, but may take 6-24hrs and many times they don't answer the question fully so you have to go back & forth a couple of times which is frustrating when you have to wait long times for responses.

@Diana Mulvihill  Yes, I was able to lock lock temps when in heat only or cool only mode.  Once in the app go to settings and lock, once the passcode is chosen for the lock it would prompt me for the temp range. 

When I started in the STR industry I used exclusively nest thermostats and could never get them to lock temps when in dual temperature heat/cool mode. I moved all of mine to ecobee for this reason and have been very happy with the switch as ecobee allows this. With ecobee you can also buy wireless door sensors for $40 that will temporarily turn off the ac or heat if guests leave doors open for more than 5 minutes. We use these door sensors on any large patio doors and you would be surprised how many guests leave the doors open for long (1-5hr+ periods) while trying to cool/heat the house. Last I checked, google/nest also limits you to 5 property drop downs per login, so once you grow to more than 5 properties you have to start sharing thermostats on the same property dropdown for multiple properties or create a 2nd login account.

I second Well & Good, I use them at two of my rentals and they do a great job.

Here is a link to an explanation of what is covered in a good STR policy. This was written by Proper insurance who writes one of the most comprehensive policies you can get for an STR.

http://tinyurl.com/nhjryw42

I am just starting to onboard with Guesty pro. Not very impressed so far.   They run your credit report to start so I did not love that.  I have yet to onboard with them as they are backed up about 1.5 months after you sign up to just do the initial onboarding call, at this rate I am expecting onboarding to take 2-3 months from the time I signed up.  Their reps also appear to be from Europe so a big time variance in available times for calls with them.

The letter is provided by the city, I don't have it in front of me, but I recall it having the address of the property, permit number, a short statement that the applicant has applied for the STR license and provides the owners name & phone number along with the property managers name & phone number.

Quote from @Ian Tyndall:

The new rules require STRs to be permitted as well and pay an annual fee of $250. Has anyone had experience with this new process?

I went through the process with a single family home.  Had about 10 letters to certify mail to neighbors and neighborhood associations in the area.  Took me about 3hrs to do all the paperwork and apply online.  I received my permit about a week later.  I would say it was a little more entailed than other cities such as Scottsdale and Sedona where I have gone through the process also.

I would get rid of the rear camera, some insurance companies like proper will not defend you on invasion of privacy lawsuits if you have a camera in the rear yard.  I would recommend a front door camera, a camera that looks over the front driveway/front street area, & cameras by any gates leading into the back yard, but none in the rear yard.   You may want to look into a noise monitoring device like minut for the rear yard if you think noise may be an issue & want to stay in front of any noise complaints from neighbors.