All Forum Posts by: Elizabeth Goforth

1) Someone brought their own grill to my house (I don't have one.) It started raining. They decided to bring the grill inside.... And grill inside... In a 3 story log cabin. :o I'm thankful they didn't burn it to the ground, and only burned the hardwoods. 

I learned from this one, to raise the damage protection policy amount I required on VRBO. 

2) Then there was that time someone stole someone else's wallet, booked a beautiful historic house on a stolen credit card, got high and/or angry, and trashed it out. Yanked light fixtures out, punched holes through sheetrock walls, broke glass door etc. Then the actual card holder charged the expense back, since it was a stolen card. 

I learned from this one, that you have to get a photo of the ID to verify the card... or else you're liable to have chargebacks and be totally unable to contest them. 

There have been others, not necessarily as notable as those two... But overall, I've had a great experience. It's just that one in every couple hundred that's terrible. 

Keep calling, and ask to talk to their new Vrbo payment processing department, which is NOT Yapstone anymore. (That's probably why Yapstone can't find your reservations.) Vrbo switched to in-house payment processing in October of 2019, and they have had lots of issues. They held payments for 3 months on two homes for me, but eventually got it sorted out. 

One thing to check, did you fill out the W-9 form and banking info again on your listings at any point since Oct 1 2019? If not, that could be what is holding your payments.  If you can't find it when you call have them walk you through where to find it and how to do it. (It's in the PC dashboard, not available on the app.)

I don't know what you mean about "right to the property" ?

Well a bank wouldn't lend on it, and title insurance wouldn't insure it. So technically, yes, someone with cash who did not do a title search or did and was okay with a clouded title could buy it. But then they'd either have to do quiet title action to clear it up or pay you to get off the chain title to resell it. 

So either way, you'd just hang out there on the chain of title until you pop up later and someone has to deal with your Memorandum. 

BUT if no money has passed for option fee or earnest money, your original option or purchase and sale isn't binding, so your memorandum wouldn't be either. 

Hi Aidan, 

Here in NC, A Memorandum of Purchase and Sale or Memorandum of Option to Purchase that is notarized can be filed on public record. So once filed, you're on the chain of title until a Termination of Memorandum is signed. If a Seller backs on your deal, in order to have a clear title to sell to someone else they have to get you to sign the Termination of Memorandum to clear the title. You can require payment for signing this, which gives you leverage and a way to make money on the deal even if you don't end up being able to buy it. 

And yes, I pay for a base cleaning and basic amount of sheets. Above that, I pay extra to my cleaner per set of sheets used over the base amount we have set, and charge extra for the guests over the base number. 

Yes, anything that would smell I ask them to handle. That means do the dishes/start the dishwasher, bag up the trash and start the wet towels in the wash. 

I would highly suggest you take your house rules and main info sheet out of the binder, laminate them, and hang one copy on the fridge and leave one copy on top of the bed of every bedroom. Not on the nightstand... Leave it laying on top of the bedspread where guests have to pick it up and move it to lay down, so each room is set to have an opportunity to read it. If we don't set it up for all guests to have a reason to read our house rules and info sheets, the host who booked may know them, but no one else often will.

Hi Mike,

Systems are everything. I manage vacation rental homes in Charlotte area, and I recommend you have the following:

House specific cleaning checklist per home w/condition section for cleaner to fill out

House specific house info sheets

House specific check out checklist per home

If you get these three documents done well, this will cover the majority of questions that arise from guests and problems with the property that arise before and after they check out.

@Brian Ellis seems to have the best idea. It would be humbling, but could be a good move so you're not stuck with that high monthly payment and growing debt. 

@Bryan Crawford @Scott Meyers Scott has some good recommendations. We just switched about six months ago from SiteLink to StorEDGE, and I'd recommend you also consider StorEDGE as a possible management software. It's web-based like WebSelfStorage, but very robust in what it can do, like SiteLink. The interface for the manager is more intuitive and user-friendly than SiteLink, and the software integrates very well with our website to do online rentals. 

Congratulations on your purchase!