Fee to manage someone else's Airbnb -how much?

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Hello All,

I live in a very touristy area of Washington DC and my neighbor owns a small apartment in the neighborhood that he would like to start using as an Airbnb. He reached out to me and asked whether I would be interested in managing it for him for a fee.

I currently have 2 Airbnbs that are doing extremely well (booked solid and with a very good revenue stream) and I feel that I could take on a third one, especially since it would be far enough from my own 2 and different enough in terms of the type of guests it would attract that it wouldn’t compete with mine.

I would be in charge of setting up the listing and making it go live, optimizing pricing so that it stays booked and it pulls a profit on a regular basis, and managing reservations and interactions with guests as needed. A cleaning crew would deal with the cleaning and maintenance and I would have to either do some or no supervision.

I am thinking that there should be a set fee to get the listing to go live and then a separate fee for the month to month administration. What are your thoughts on this based on your experience?

For the month to month administration I have thought of the following scenarios, but I would really appreciate to hear from others who have done this before…
1.A flat monthly service fee regardless of how many bookings we get + a percentage of the bookings,
2. Only a percentage of the bookings -how much?
3. An administration fee per booking (attracting and managing every part of the the reservation from supervising cleaning and maintenance to communicating with guests before and during their stay) + a bonus if revenue targets are exceeded.
4. Other scenarios -which ones?

My neighbor does not care to use Everbooked or a similar management service because it is impersonal, and he understands that in order for his Airbnb to do well he will need to carefully market it and cater to his particular guest demographic ( we are a national and international tourist destination).

Any and all thoughts and advice would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks in advance
Cristina

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Flat fee to set up and research things like finding cleaning crews. Hourly at $35 per. After that, 25-30% of bookings. Frankly, if it were me, I would think I’d have my hands full with the other bookings and I would think it would be more trouble than it’s worth…I would say no!

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Around our way for fully managed 20 - 25% but from what you say you are just managing online in the main so wouldn’t be charging in this sort of range.

Who’s going to cover if there are problems with guests - will you be doing that too ?

I don’t think it’s fair to charge a flat fee but go for a % for day to day support based on the work you put in. I would do some market research - see what other management companies charge locally and then decide on your own charging model based on what the market will bear and what would make it worth your while.

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I think she needs a flat fee for setting it up, yes. How else will she get compensated?

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In our rural area, on a nice golf course, I charge 20% of the rental fee. But I also do the cleaning and get that $120 (sleeps 8, 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath). If I had not gotten the cleaning job, I might have charged 30%. I do take care of issues and we’ve had a few with boisterous renters there causing the neighbors to complain.

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Hello Cristina!
I have same questions with you, how did you go? pls help
Thanks,
Mariz

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She’s unlikely to be around @Mariz you have dug up a post from four years ago :grin::grin:

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