Not everyone is going to lose their job. Some people will continue to have secure employment, even they now are working from home rather than going into the office. Both my oldest daughter and her husband are lucky to have jobs like that. Some retired people have secure pensions. It would be crucial to determine if the long term renter is indeed in a situation like that.
LTR is ok and perfectly legal now, but don’t be surprised to get complaints from the “neighbors” that you are still renting your place short term and accuse you of “bringing the virus into the community”. Never mind that it is already in the community. They’ll even call the authorities on you. Then you’ll need to explain you are doing only long-term. But not too bad.
I honestly don’t see what the big deal is here. It’s nothing new that Airbnb allowed users (i.e., hosts) to name the terms of their reservation schemes. We can have a minimum number of nights, and we can have a maximum number of nights. You don’t need to read Wired magazine or tech blogs to figure that out. Just look at the damn website.
One of the biggest differences in price really is the guest’s cost. They don’t need to pay the occupancy excise tax on stays longer then 28 days (it may be longer in some places). That’s well above 3% almost every where.
So what’s the big that we pay a fee to Airbnb? It’s like not they’re going to provide their service for free. C’mom guys, it’s a business, just like you and me. You can complain until the cows come home, but no one is forcing you to use Airbnb as your only means of marketing, calendar, communication, insurance protection, POS merchant, tax collection, and conflict resolution center. Good look resolving a rental dispute or having the occupancy taxes collected and remitted to your local government through craigslist. The staff at craigslist would laugh at you.
The 4 years we’ve been hosting, I’ve had a healthy mix of short-term (<4 nights) and semi-long-term (>28 nights) stays. Until now with COVID-19, it was near impossible to book a stretch of nights longer then 2 weeks at our 2 listings, unless a guest booked months in advance. Even then, I had a 7-night max. on one of our listings.
I think in light of a highly infectious disease like COVID-19 and the fact it will be here for a while, Airbnb is reminding users, both hosts and guests, it can be a booking platform for longer term stays, too. I think this virus will disrupt travel as we know it for a while, and the need for longer term stays may become a more suitable market for some STR hosts. I think it’s smart that Airbnb is sort of re-branding itself from a vacation destination booking platform to more of a housing rental platform, not that that’s really any different then before.
As hosts, I think we need to know what we want to do first and then list our spaces accordingly. Airbnb isn’t forcing you to be a landlord anymore than it did before the roll-out of these features - they already existed. Hosts need to decide for themselves what they want to do, and for some Airbnb might not be the right platform for them.
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I’ve had too much time to think about this.
So many things are uncertain, I’m pondering cancelling the few summer STR reservations I have and starting up again after a vaccine is found.
Uncertainties:
- Covid19 decreasing (will it?)
- Disinfectant supplies available
- Paper products available
- Who will be allowed area access. (Currently owners of rental properties may not stay their own 2nd homes. There is talk about not allowing rentals to people from hard hit cities like New York or Chicago.)
- How to make sure the unit is disinfected or how much time between rentals to let the virus naturally die on surfaces.
Hoping things get better…
BTW @KKC called it correctly - expert’s recommending social distancing for another year.
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I also predicted the resistance of certain subsets of the population. We’ll see how far they want to take the resistance and how much is empty bluster.
I’m now “closed” until 4th of July weekend, subject to adjustments.
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Oh? I have used Zillow for years and just tested one of my listings. There was no fee.
We would NEVER accept a LTR through Air or any other platform. We’ve been landlords for many years. It is easy to advertise through Zillow, and we have full control.
There is no way that we would involve or permit a 3rd party “guest centric booking site” to have any say or authority in that situation.
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Looks like they postponed starting the fee program until May 1. The fees vary depending upon services
Also your first listing is free until it expires (30 days). Additional/future listings will incur a fee
In the FAQs is a statement fees will not be charged in all areas. You must read the FAQs to find what those areas are.
Excellent summary. You are correct, airbnb’s “emphasis” on LTR’s is really just a reminder and highlighting it on their home page. My only suggestion, I think they should lower their guest fee % for LTR, because there is a larger rent amount per reservation, and it would be more competitive with local agencies and direct rentals.
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i think Airbnb is not ready yet for Long term fully furnished market, as personally I don’t wish to inc utility bills in monthly bases as usage on guests depends, some can take all ur margins, and when he comes to cancellation and refund should be diff rules. Imagine someone blocks ur calendar for 2 months and ends up cancelling after a week?
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THANK YOU!!
Also the platform isn’t set up for additional cleanings for long term stays.
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We are having a big issue with long term stay where the guest are trying to reserve for a month with a 95% discount. We haven’t add any discount to our long term stay. I don’t know where is this coming from and Airbnb cannot resolve the problem. This is ridiculous. It looks like someone hacked our account. Potentially loosing customers.
Welcome @Odee123 to the forum
Food for thought you can override the %% discount by inputting a custom monthly rent amount. I’ll see if I can pull a screen shot.
This isn’t going to address the core problem of the %%% discount but will stop the requests to book at too low of a rate
Thank you so much Anne. I will try that. We had 6 different people trying to booked for a month $17,000. Airbnb was giving them a discount of 90% paying only $700. Is it that crazy?
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Strange things happen everyday on Airbnb. Best wishes getting this solved
Oh—I think you must use the web site (not the app) to access the custom monthly rate function
Hi Anne,
I followed the steps that you sent me. However, I was still having the same issue. I removed the monthly fee and the discount and problem solved.