All Forum Posts by: Jon Martin

 Seems like it is. A simple enemy analysis shows a lot of properties with professional photos and designed interiors with wide open calendars. 

They can't. However they can start to look at hosts as being their customers as well, which they are. 

The star rating is especially problematic. I don't have a problem with setting a high standard but it needs to be transparent and well understood on both sides. Many people think that a 3-4 star rating, like you would see for a traditional hotel, michelin star restaurant or a movie, is a good rating. Whereas on AirBnb, Yelp, Amazon, Uber etc anything from 4.5 and below is crap. Having the overall rating based on the aggregate of the categories would be far more transparent and meaningful than the average of the overall ratings. 

A lot of doom and gloom in this post. Of course you are going to have some owners throw in the towel who put minimal effort into decor, photos, customer service etc and/or they underestimate the amount of time and start up cost required. Especially after the boom years where very many underwhelming listings did quite well. 

What we are are seeing the natural back end of any boom industry as the excess under-performers wash out and leave the better performers with less competition among each other. This is a good thing. 

 To update, I decided to stick with Atto. Like I said it has a big green button to press when I start and it turns red until I hit it again when I’m done. I try to make a point of batching all of my misc StR duties and the minutes add up to hours over the course of the week.

HI IRS!!! 😂😇

Like has been suggested above, either use a local company (I'm sure there are plenty) or self manage and pocket the savings. Put a smart lock on the door and you've already solved one of the biggest hurdles that required on site management in decades past. A good relationship with a cleaner and a handyman is really all you need in terms of boots on the ground and unless you want to be completely absentee it's worth the minimal effort to self manage. 

I went to summer camp on the neighboring lake, the water up there is amazing!

 The IRS doesn’t need to know that! Haha. Thanks for the suggestion. 

Also Thanks @Michael Baum and @John Underwood. I’m working towards being like you guys when I grow up! 

Lots of recent threads on this. Most listings have some duties asked, mainly at least one of those you listed above, but this is creating a lot of controversy in the space. If you give them a bunch of stuff to do and they pay a hefty cleaning fee, they may leave with a bad taste in their mouth and leave a less than stellar review accordingly. 

Anything beyond what you have listed is unreasonable IMO unless it is the standard for your market. For example, in some east coast beach destinations it has always been customary to rent or bring your own linens, so if that is what people are accustomed to it is probably not a problem. Or if your cleaners simply cannot do it because of their own logistical constraints and work load. If that's the case you should be upfront about it and your cleaning fee should reflect that. 

What app do you like to use for tracking your time? I started using "Atto" a few days ago for 2023 material participation logging and I like that it has a big red/green start/stop button. What I don't like is that they don't make it easy to add any notes or codes for what you were doing and have the add up by category. I am also making a point of batching all of my misc admin duties with the tracker running. 

Any others I should look into? Also, if i reply to a series of text messages (with my cleaner, for example) can I log those as 1 minute each to read/reply? Or should I make a point of logging in/out every time I do something with text messages? 

FYI I am planning to talk with my CPA about this but I want to let him finish my return for 2022 first before I ask/pay him for his time. Thanks in advance.

 Show me a nice backdrop for my morning beer and afternoon coffee and i'm instantly sold! ;)

The model was fraught from the start. No matter how you manage, there has to be boots on the ground to turn your place over, restock supplies, fix stuff etc. Why would I pay a company with a corporate headquarters far from my market 10-20% (not sure what they charge) of my revenue to manage that for me when all they are doing is dispatching contract cleaners? 

At that point it doesn't matter if it's me or them doing the work because neither of us are on site and both parties are relying on local help. At that point I may as well do the work and pocket that revenue myself, because if I am having to stay on top of someone at the call center resolving my issues then I'm still working. They are basically the guy on Office Space who takes the order and walks it down the hall to the engineer. "I'M A PEOPLE PERSON!!!!"