All Forum Posts by: Tyler Work

@Collin S. a word about Venmo... you'll probably have to issue your cleaning service/housekeeper a 1099 at the end of the year.  Especially if you have multiple properties, it might be a good idea to use Quickbooks and pay them via bill pay so you can accurately track all of the expenses and not have to scroll through your venmo feed at the end of the year and spend hours tallying up the charges.  

As far as what to ask, I've found effective communication is by far the most important part (for me) of a cleaning service.  The bigger the company, the more layers of people you have to go through to get to the person actually cleaning your home.  I would ask if you have someone to call/text or if email is the only option.  

Obtain proof of insurance from the company or if you're hiring someone off craigslist make sure your insurance covers your liability if they sue you.  

I've got some more specific guidelines for how I hire if you shoot me a PM I can go into more detail.  

@Bill Connell I've rented my place out in an urban market for over 2 years, have only provided a Roku with Netflix, Hulu, Watch ESPN, etc and an HDTV antenna and have yet to receive one complaint about it.  My place is small and I think people are travelling to visit the city, not watch TV.  I think it really depends on your market, but I save hundreds a year (and hours of my time not having to address cable issues).  

@Jason Blasenak if you need a more "official" payment processor with invoices, etc you could try management software like Tokeet.  They process their payments via Stripe (~3% fee) but the software syncs with Airbnb and can keep track of who has paid and who hasn't.  Probably easier to use Paypal, etc with 1 rental but as you grow you might benefit using software.  

@Annette Barnett @Villy Ellinger might be able to find you a condo in the Ft Walton Beach, FL area.  Good appreciation is very speculative so not sure its going to check that box but I think it fits all your other criteria.  

@Joshua Feit my biggest tip would be to make sure all of your numbers work assuming you long term rent it i.e. don't rely only on STR revenue in your analysis. Shoot me a link to your property and I can offer some more thoughts if you'd like.

@Paolo Ruggieri you mentioned a 1 month minimum, this might kick it into a "long term" rental period for some carriers.  Do you live in the property or rent out each room individually and live elsewhere?  

@Dan K. lots of great advise here but my 2 cents is be careful what login credentials/information you share with your VAs. I gave one of mine (Upwork VA based out of the Philippines) my login to Airbnb so they could write guest review responses and they changed the payout method to route all my rent payments to their account. Luckily I caught the change before any payouts processed and changed my password, but just thought people should be aware this happens.

Re software - agree with @Julie McCoy you don't need software to sync calendars for VRBO and Airbnb but once you start using Booking dot com, Tripadvisor, or others you'll start needing a channel manager/PMS.  I've been using Tokeet with 20+ rentals for the past year and it works ok.  Seems to be a pretty good bang for the buck.  I did a ton of research and never found anything that worked better so I never switched.  

@Sherif Taher it sounds like you're working with an individual to manage some of your vacation rental properties and not an established management company.

If that is the case, as @Caroline C. said Airbnb no longer supports co-host payouts, so you'll have to pay them some other way.  Easiest for you is to add them as a co-host on Airbnb and just have them send you a bill for their management fee.  All funds go to your first, then the co-host at the end of the month.  Airbnb typically disperses funds the day or the day after a guest checks in.  If you give them access to your profile they will have the ability to change the payout methods.

Hi @Denni Polmateer, shoot me a PM I might know a few people who could help you out.  

@Dakota Enck you could charge your investor a management fee and a fee to do the setup.  Keep 20% of the rental income or whatever number has enough $ left over to get them to a 20% return.  Your investor owns the house and you make income on the operation similar to a property manager since this is basically what you're doing.  If you want some equity for finding the deal you could ask for that as well, but I don't think its realistic to expect actual equity in the house without putting up some cash yourself.  Hope this helps!