It is not misleading. You can cancel without penalty. I am not sure why you feel the need to argue with me again and again but I am getting tired of it. Do me a favor and STOP.
Buh Bye
RR
Thanks guys. Appreciate all the feedback. I think i wonāt cancel the reservation, since they have technically done nothing wrong and I feel its not right to cancel and ruin a potential holiday just because they found a fantastic deal that my manager offered up w/o my knowledge. In this case, its probably my fault for not managing my manager very well.
I have told my manager to lower the weekly and monthly discounts. Still thinking about whether or not to cap total reservation to no more than 25 days. My wife thinks we donāt have to, and Iām also cautious because weāre getting guests that obviously canāt book the popular locations in and around the CBD and surrounding precincts. Iām thinking if i should wait and see a couple of months.
Statistically I think most guests are great, as @TuMo Tumo has pointed out. And heās right about me being nervous as a first time host plus with very little control. Fortunately or unfortunately rental laws in Australia are heavily biased towards landlords and even traditional long lease tenants can get evicted with a 14 day notice and no course of appeal. Previously it was just 7 days!
Out of pocket? Why would you accept a booking that leaves you out of pocket? Where is the sense in that?
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Why would they be tenants? They are under a contract with Airbnb.
The contract is between Host and Guest.
No doubt this varies, seems down under is different, often 30 days occupancy is enough to create a Landlord Tenant relationship.
In the Us, and it varies from state to state, a guest staying for more than a certain number of days (usually 28 but not everywhere - some have fewer days) becomes a legal tenant and it needs a court case to remove them from the rental if they refuse to pay. Which they can. Read on.
If the apartment/rental is in two names (George and Mary Smith or whatever) then the court has to issue subpoenas to both parties. āGeorgeā might be taken to court in two months and ordered to leave but āMaryā might not have her court date for several months. The landlord (host) cannot do what we all would like to do and turn off the electricity, AC, gas or internet. We still have to pay for it throughout the court procedure. We are pretty helpless in this regard.
Airbnb hosts should ideally find out what the situation is in their own state/city and guard against long term tenants.
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In the state of Victoria, Australia, landlords only have to provide for 14 days notice to vacate a tenant prior to end of tenancy. the available reasons can be that the tenant owes 14 or more days rent, etc. If the tenant causes malicious damage to the house or puts neighbours in danger, he can be vacated immediately. A āno reasonā vacate however takes 120 days, but i donāt see anyone booking nor will i accept over 120 days of airbnb.
Hi, also in Australia, playing devils advocate it might not be that you are particularly cheap but that all the short term rentals in your area are on AirBnB now so that is the only way they can get a 45 days stay, probably, as you say because they are between houses. You can always ask, they might be visiting grandma over the holidays. If you donāt want families then restrict your max guests to 2 but in the listing say there are more beds available but guests will have to enquire rather than IB. Or get off IB entirely for a few months until you feel more comfortable with the sort of guests you get.
Also how does deducting 35% leave you out of pocket? That should still leave 65%? I know you will have other expenses but they would normally be 15-25% at most.
Personally my max booking length is 7 days. I live onsite so the thought of being stuck with someone I didnāt like would really upset me as I had a short term tenant (3 mths) I had to ask leave after 2 weeks and it wasnāt pleasant.
In Victoria you can also get them to leave earlier if you or a family member need to move into the property. Not difficult to arrange I am sure. I wish I had known this when I sold my flat in Melbourne and had to wait 3 months even though I offered to pay them to leave early.
My manager said itās a lull period, and having out-of-pocket bookings are better than sititing empty - he claims weāll make it back in Summer. Itās not without basis, but I thought the losses are suffered in vain as a 45 day booking only generates one review (and no guarantee it will be a positive one). Iām surprised he didnāt think of a more appropriate strategy to generate reviews. I have been poring through the airbnb website and some of the more entrepreneurial hosts significantly undercut their prices to generate reviews, but cap the number of booking days and blocks out all bookings after July.
I guessed I placed too much trust in the āexpertiseā of these āprofessionalā management companies.
Sounds like itās better for the manager because he/she still gets 20% while you eat the expense of the listing that you are losing money onā¦ I donāt see the benefit to youā¦
I think we will have to agree to disagree on this one @KKC. As you know Airbnb are a law onto themselves and what they say and what they do are often too very different things.
They may have let you cancel with your guest in your situation, but another host might have got a different response.
Airbnb do qualify reasons they will allow you to cancel under IB.
To tell newbies they can cancel without penalty because they donāt want a long term booking, I think isnāt great advice, UNLESS it also meets one of the following:
- A first cancellation
- It breaks your house rules
- It makes you feel uncomfortable.
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I am not arguing with you @RiverRock. I am saying I donāt think your advice is correct.
To tell this new host they can ācancel without penaltyā is misleading as you havenāt qualified the conditions under which they can do this.
Out of pocket occupation is not better than empty unless you have great zero maintenance tenants who look after the property. What is the manager on?
The host is also including the cost of the mortgage/capital investment in the assessment of his return. A lot of hosts donāt hence too low prices and a race to the bottom.
In that case any money is better than none - it can only be a loss if it is expenditure on something you only use when guests are there.
In the UK if the letting is in your own home itās easy to get someone out.
Well no, if your mortgage is $400 a month and communal maintenance fee $100 a month and you only get $300 from the guests thatās still a loss regardless of expendables. Yep itās better than nothing but a fundamentally flawed business model.
Sorry my post has generated a lot of arguments here - but glad itās all still being kept constructive.
Yup - loss making because I am measuring against the capital and interest repayments. A lot of people are racing to the bottom by offering ridiculous room prices - i fear the model will ultimately be unsustainable and take time to correct. I personally know a Melbourne host who switched back to LTR after a year on the Airbnb market and his place was in a central inner-CBD area (pretty fantastic location).
I am willing to absorb some short term losses to generate reviews, so i was a bit annoyed that the host accepted a 45 day booking at essentially a loss-making price - and iām getting no benefit because it only generates one review - which leaves me with 2 reviews max after being on the market for 2 months. The loss doesnāt just relate to the shortfall between hosting income and council/utilities/management fee/mortgage repayments. I havenāt even counted in the depreciation costs. All these hassle, losses and trouble for only one pathetic review? I have no idea what this airbnb manager is doing.
Some of the worst business iāve done in years.