All Forum Posts by: Mark Futalan

Minimum stays can be helpful and also limiting your guest occupancy count can help too. More importantly, make your house rules clear and make sure guest know your expectations when it comes to your home.

Every now and then you do get guests who don't really communicate while you might have some that overly communicate lol. It comes with the territory when managing STR's. Your dealing with different people with numerous personalities. You can typically gauge someone's communication level during the initial reservation period. Did they clearly provide a welcome message and indicate their plans? How quickly do they respond to follow up questions? Did you feel like the guest was engaged in the conversation? Most guests are on vacation and really don't want to talk to hosts all day but a standard check in and follow up is always good on your end.

We do 11am check out and 4pm check in. We sometimes allow guests to check in early if our schedule allows and guests seem to appreciate that and it’s usually reflective in our reviews. We usually communicate with our guests beforehand if there are same day turnovers that don’t allow for later check in or check out. Most guests understand and have non problem with it.

We try not to make things difficult for guests. I see the importance of spelling out rules and fees but we try keeping it simple as guests really can get turned off by overly complicated and overly worded rules. We have a maximum allowable which aligns with our city regulations. We don’t charge extra fees as long as guests are within the limit. If they exceed, we don’t accept it because we are then in violation of city regulations. We’ve never had a problem with that.

@John Cornelius

Sometimes that does happen. If you have smart locks, best thing you can do is not activate it or not give them a code until the check in time. Most guests do understand the same day process and realize cleaners need time to clean, so letting them know also helps.

@Pari Thiagasundaram

I live in CA and invest in the Coachella Valley area (La Quinta). It's a 2 hour drive from LA. There's a difference between an STR and a STVR (vacation rental). Depending on what your goals are (owning a second home, pure investment only etc), we look for true vacation rental markets where the rules and regulations are already defined. Sites like AirDNA can be helpful as well as looking at homes on Airbnb/VRBO. Just know with the current COVID situation, travel has really changed and the type of travelers and stays people may have gotten before the pandemic may not be the same going forward. Drive up destinations, local travel, longer stays, small intimate family groups are trends we are currently seeing.

Same day turnovers can be a good or bad thing. Good thing in that your calendar is always full and your capitalizing on each day. The bad thing is more wear and tear on your property with different travelers/vacationers coming in/out. Also, should a repair or maintenance item need to be addressed, it’s hard to fix in a short turn-around time.

A quick Yelp search typically does the trick if your looking for cleaning company recommendations. I use Nextdoor as well to get recommendations from local neighbors.

@Paul Shannon

Also to add, if you choose not to self manage you’d give up a huge chunk of profits for something INMO, is not that difficult to self-manage. There are many people on this site that do. Plenty of systems and software out there to make the process easier. I have 2 that I self-manage remotely with a full time job and a family.

@Paul Shannon

Hi Paul,

We use a cleaning company that works exclusively with vacation rentals. The owner even has a few STR's of her own so she knows what it takes to run a successful Airbnb. We are very particular about what we expect and need and we communicate that with our cleaners. It's worked out great for us, and we've maintained close to a 5 star rating on Airbnb with close to a 100 reviews. They have a master calendar and prioritize same days turns. I would suggest working with a cleaning company because they are usually well staffed and we don't have to worry as much about availability or someone calling in sick. We do have back up cleaners just in case that we've used and also do a great job so we have options. Sure you could probably save a few bucks here and there if you hire a personal cleaner but the way I look at it is that cost is passed over to the guest anyway. But if you can find a good independent cleaner I'm all for it too, just make sure to manage your expectations. They also help with letting us know if things break or are missing and we just navigate through that as needed. Good cleaning goes a long way. We have a list of names/companies in the area that we can call depending on the situation. I find that as long as your communicative with guests on things like a maintenance item, it's usually not as a big deal.