Why don’t you keep your AirBnB running and assist your cousin financially? Wouldn’t that make more financial sense?
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Well, she lives in Minnesota and would only come to school here in Missouri because she can live with us instead of spending money on room and board at another school that offers the same degree. It’s not the expense for her that’s a factor, it’s living on campus on one school away from home, or going to a school near me and living with us (and of course saving a little money).
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Sometimes it just amazes me that hosts (even newish ones) don’t take the time and trouble to understand the system!
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@Sarah_Warren, you are too kind and your family members are too selfish.
We all have limited time and resources and we all need to take care of our immediate families, pay our bills and plan for our futures. Your cousin needs to make her own way. It would be very selfish of her to expect to take advantage of your apartment at a cost to you of $1200 to $1700 a month in lost income. You’ve shared some of your very important financial goals with your fellow forum members, and I see no reason why doing a good deed for a family member should come at such a steep price for you. That is just not right, and it’s not fair.
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That’s right. I heard a podcast about a park ranger whose duty it was to remove skunks from traps. She couldn’t get a date because her whole car/house/life stunk of skunk - until Febreeze - LOL. Incidentally, Febreeze itself is odorless, but in a test market, no one would buy it. So 3M added scent and it was an instant hit. Nothing says clean like a fresh smell.
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Well, you gave me the nerve to call and say we can’t do it. I was supposed to hear for sure a few days ago anyway and it’s been silence. ugh.
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I do notice that pet people are nose deaf. Like smokers are nose deaf to the stank of cigarettes. Lastly, people who work out all the time…I don’t think pet people are compatible with non pet people, its just leaves a residual smell that is not tolerated unless you have a pet of your own and have it with you. I think it is great you offer a pet friendly space, you didn’t even seem to gripe about shampooing and painting. For me those would be deal breakers regardless of the cause.
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I am a lifelong pet person and I have a great sense of smell. I’ve been told by many guests that they were pleasantly surprised by the lack of dog smell in our house.
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Going to a school near you and living with you is one thing. Living in your private apartment that you rent out for 1500 - 2000 a month for 300 is quite another. That is a large financial burden.
Do you have a spare room or even a couch in your house you can offer her?
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I have 4 kids, not sure I want to add a teenage cousin to the mix, lol. But that may be a good option I hadn’t thought of. I could move my toddlers to sharing a room and let her have one of the bedrooms for only $100/month!
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BTW, I love this board. It makes me think outside the box, it makes me critically think about what I’m doing, and it inspires me to raise my prices and cut my offerings 
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Don’t undersell your spare room either! $100/month sounds very cheap. Obviously it’s hard to charge ‘normal’ rent for family but don’t feel you have to give it away.
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$100 can’t include board or you cleaning sheets or any AirBNB host things. At that rate they should help with housework or gardening or watching the kids once a week so you and the husband can have a date night.
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Maybe your cousin could swap some light housekeeping/babysitting for her room and board? She’ll hopefully focus on her studies, but she should have a few hours each week to help out. I think that is the gracious thing to do, even being family.
I personally hate it when family members take advantage of each other. There’s helping and there’s “mooching”. My stepsons would not lift a finger to help at Thanksgiving while I was cooking all day long, unless I gave them explicit orders to do even the simplest of tasks (set the table!), and never said “thank you”. So I stopped making Thanksgiving dinners.
I’m not suggesting that you make a slave of the young lady, but it should be reasonable to expect that she repays your kindness by helping out when she has spare time.
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and @Gardenhost Yes, that was always part of the deal, her babysitting once a week and fully taking care of herself. I’m just looking to cover any extra expenses such as utilities. Plus it sounds like we’re really a backup plan if she doesn’t get a bump up on her ACT and get a good enough scholarship to make her #1 school affordable. At least they felt guilty when I called and apologized for being so indecisive and understand and are happy that we can still be willing to host her even though she’ll be sad to not have her own space. We have to do right for our family.
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We allow pets as well and have a couple of dogs and cats. Fortunately, we don’t have much in the way of carpeting and we don’t allow the pets in the guest areas of the house. The cats are mainly outdoor cats, though they have a cat door to come in and visit/nap/relax. They aren’t new cats–we’ve had them for years-- and they have always gone outside to tend to their business. I’m not a fan of cat boxes, even though I grew up with them. I’m a nurse and I get to clean up enough poop at work–I’m not scooping the cat’s poop as well. And dog poop is right out–that one the guys get to deal with and woe betide the critter that even thinks of messing in my house.
Last week, we had a guest check in to one of our rooms for four nights–seemed nice enough. When I woke the morning after they checked in, it was to find emails from airbnb where this guest stated the smell of catbox (specifically catbox) was so overwhelming in the room that they couldn’t sleep. Said they had lived with cats before and knew what a cat box smelled like and so were sure that’s what it was. They cancelled the remainder of their stay and had already left when I got up.
I don’t have a cat box. The room the guests were staying in was actually recently completely remodeled and has no carpet. No guest has stayed in there with a cat (it is our newest room to join our airbnb endeavors). None of us could smell a blessed thing in there. I’m a smoker (outside only) and defnitely don’t smell as well as many, so I had to bring in friends to do the room sniff test. No smell.
The cats are never allowed in there (neither are the dogs, of course). The linens were freshly changed by myself prior to the guest’s arrival. The room had been lightly febreezed prior to the guests arrival (Bora Bora scent, I believe). The whole area had been wiped down top to bottom (pretty much our standard) by myself and my guys. The room is a little offset from our own living areas–enough that one would be hard pressed to say the smell came from another room wherein there might be a cat box. Which there isn’t.
So what did I do? I sent the guests a note of deepest apology, expressing my confusion at the cat box issue but primarily my horror at having inconvenienced them and my assurance I was looking seriously into the matter. I refunded their entire stay. Then I went out and bought a bunch of Damprid with carbon filters and placed them discretely under ever bed, in every closet, and in every room to ensure that I absolutely knew there was not a funky transitory odor hanging about that I simply couldn’t find.
What did I actually feel like doing? I felt like telling the inconsiderate twits to bite their mad spot and stop taking medications that cause sensory hallucinations. After all that, I’m dead sure they saw one of the cats (which we are fully open about in our listing) and got that whole mental “where there’s a cat, there’s a catbox” thing stuck in their brains where it grew to epic proportions and ate away at their dysfunctional mental processing until they couldn’t sleep from the horror of it all.
I may have issues with this. 
Interestingly, they have left no review–I haven’t had time to search the policies, but given that Airbnb hasn’t bugged me to leave them a review, I am guessing once they cancel within 24 hours, they can’t leave a review.
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I suspect there was something else about your listing they did not like, and they came up with the “cat box” idea in order to get their money back. And more than likely, whatever it was they didn’t like was fully disclosed in your listing, and they didn’t bother to read.
In the future, if you know for a fact that guests are or have made a false claim, please do not apologize to them. This will only teach them that it’s easy to get out of an Airbnb stay anytime they like. Instead, call Airbnb and explain your side, at least. There is certainly no guarantee you’ll get your money, but please do try.
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Oh, I agree in hindsight–definitely a case of reacting first and regretting it later. I know very well that there are very effective ways of disagreeing politely while making one’s point and should know better than to simply placate. I admit, I was so thrown off by the cat box thing that I did a poor job of managing the situation.
We’ve only been doing this a few months, but I have to admit, I am continually astounded by guest’s lack of reading ability. It seems one can clearly put information into a listing, email, text, and send the same information by carrier pigeon, and an astonishingly large portion of the guests will behave as though they have never seen said information. They are either completely surprised by it or ask things like where they can park when you’ve all but tattooed that information on their foreheads in capital letters.
It is my mission in life to idiot-proof my Airbnb rooms. I am considering installing lit neon signs, but I expect the neighbors might complain. I’m always so happy when someone has actually read the house guide. It’s like a breath of fresh air…non cat-box tainted fresh air.
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