@Chris Kreidel
I have two rentals in Florida. I enjoy the smart tech of it and this is what I found to be useful so far.
For the thermostats I find the ecobee the best vs nest or others as it has a few features that work great for a vacation rental that others do not. You can set the temp range and the guest cannot go outside that range. You can also adjust the temp variance range so instead of the unit kicking and off every time the temp raises 0.5 degrees you can set it to kick on at 1.5 degrees which give the hvac units a lot less wear and tear and saves a huge amount on electricity. Not sure how I feel about this feature but You can also adjust it say it 1 or 2 degree cooler or warmer then it really is. It has great reports and and when you lock it so guest can access your settings it does not look like it is in lockdown mode vs how the nest looks where you know you are in lockdown mode.
Locks. I like the remote lock with edgestate app. It’s 6 dollars a month but give you great info and you can set it up to integrate with Vrbo and Airbnb to send codes that expire to your guest. For locks them self the CG from remote lock is commercial grade I use that for my beach condo. If you need a dead bolt lock I recommend the York zwave yrd216 model those were the top rated for heavy vacation rental use that I could find and if you get a Vera hub it can work with the edgestate software.
For cleaners I have recently discovered the TurnoverBnB app I actually posted about it the other day. I have played around some with it and I really like it and it is free for the first property if you already have your own cleaner and 6 per month for any additional property. It integrates with Vrbo and Airbnb so your cleaners can go into their app and accept a cleaning and when finished they can hit finish and you get an alert. You can also set it up to pay automatically but they charge a processing fee of 3.9 to your credit card. So far so good. My cleaner seems to really like it and she said she will try out and if it works really good for her she is going to make all her owners set up an account so everything still be in one app for her with all of her cleaning schedules vs having multiple communications with multiple owner.
Channel managers. I have looked into them but they seem to be expense and not sure what more You would need to do other then having Airbnb and Vrbo app. I have recently started using beyond pricing which it sets your pricing automatically and is dynamic. It charges 1 % of booming amount but it seems to work pretty well and it does catch Radom data that you might not account for being in high demand.
Would love to know more about big bear and how the numbers look as I would like to get a place out west at some point and most of the ski hills the ROI do not seem that great since the cost of entry is so high but from this forum there seems to be allot of good things said about big bear.
