Property manager says 30% but fees come to 65-80% of nightly rate

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@mccarras

Im happy to chat with you. I’ll post the short (ok long version) version here.

  1. Stock rental well with cleaning supplies & tools (mops, brooms, cloths, rubber gloves, etc.) including antibacterial wipes like Clorox wipe-ups.
  2. Provide laundry detergent & fabric softener
  3. Include in the rental description & first correspondence to guest: to help keep this rental affordable, it is a “guest does exit cleaning” rental. The guest is to do the exit cleaning & wash/dry/stow the towels & bed linens you used (many guests bring their own so they are not doing laundry the morning of checkout)
  4. Send message to guest the day before checkout: I hope you are enjoying your stay. Sadly tomorrow is check -out at 1:00. To protect yourself if the next guest claims the rental wasn’t cleaned, send pictures to me if the cleaned unit (including under toilet seat & bathroom mirrors). In the meantime if you have any questions let me know.

There is a checklist posted on the refrigerator.

  1. I have a cleaner who wants to work as her schedule allows. In a separate message, “if you prefer to use a cleaning service, contact xxxxx at xxxxxx. She accepts jobs based on availability so contact her soon. She accepts payments via Zelle & cash.”

  2. During peak season, there is usually an odd night or two each month that is not booked. I’m close enough I can pop in to restock supplies & clean.

While yes different people see clean differently in most cases the guest does a better job than the services who zoom in, spray tubs with Clorox, clean toilets, vacuum & zoom out.

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“Positive” reasons may not mean the same thing to everyone, though. Satirists make a living out of making fun of things- some people would characterize that as being “negative”. And how something is perceived is also quite individual. You could give the same advice to 2 different people, and one might be the type to not take themselves or things too seriously, and say, “Hey, thanks, that never occurred to me before” and another take it as some personal criticism and be super defensive.

While there’s never a need to be downright nasty, on almost all public forums there are posters who are very tactful and weigh their words, and some who offer non-sugar-coated, blunt, tough love. The latter is not necessarily at all negative, we just all have different communication styles. Most people are trying to offer and share valuable knowledge, even if they aren’t always “nice” about it.

I dread a world where everything has to be seen as “positive”, and not offend anyone. Can you imagine if all movie, book, and product reviews only had positive things to say? Reviews would then become pretty useless. “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything” is good advice if your aunt asks how you like her new decor- even if you think it’s revolting, saying so would serve no purpose other than to be hurtful. But it doesn’t pertain to giving advice on online forums or leaving reviews, IMO.

I say there are 3 things which are considered to be major sins in this millennium- smoking, gluten, and being “negative.”
:wink:

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That’s actually changing after a number of recent lawsuits. The reason college creds are given is that internships are meant to be real world educational opportunities. It has nothing to do with if the intern is paid or not.

Ofcourse it’s unfortunate that corporations and unscrupulous businesses have taken advantage of workers. Aside from being unethical to not pay for intern labor, companies (and business owners) now run the risk of being sued for back wages + fines.

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Wow! I love how you build in some accountability there by having guests take photos. This might actually be a good fit for me because I do have someone who lives next door who has done cleaning in the past for the place, so between asking guests to clean it themselves and having her available if someone doesn’t want to do that, it seems like it might work out. I’m so intrigued…

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Yeah, I was out of line; having a crap day. I usually don’t bring my baggage into my online existence, but I’m not immune to the pull of being anonymous.

I think you’re right about people using online communities to serve their own needs. The cool thing is that sometimes this leads to really supportive and inclusive communities, which is really fascinating. These don’t usually get as much press as the communities that are not as supportive and inclusive.

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Sorry Chris, I was being a jerk with my response. No excuses; I was just having a bad day. I don’t like or agree with what you said, but my apologies for how I responded .

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I agree, and isn’t that interesting? My aunt is Mormon (Latter Day Saint) and I remember a few years ago she went offline on social media for a week or two because the LDS leadership suggested that church members should take a breather from social media; the implication was that they needed to reconnect with the real world and escape the negativity of online communities for a while. The underlying assumption seemed to be that social media was competitive, triggering, and causing mental health issues. I know that’s a stereotype about social media, and I’m sure that’s the case for some people that they experience negativity (especially if they are celebrities) and FOMO and whatnot, but my use of Instagram (where I used to post stories and pictures of my wildlife rescue) is that you can find remarkably supportive, positive communities. If I told a story about having to euthanise a badly injured animal, I’d get an outpouring of virtual love and “hang in there” messages; if I told a success story about rehabbing an animal, I’d get a mess of enthusiastic “well done, that’s great!” messages. I almost never saw any negative comments.

Anyway, I’d love to read your research, @mccarras!

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This particular community has sometimes been very supportive and inclusive. There were some terrible bigots a few years ago and the majority here said, “we don’t want you here.” We can offer a lot of help, almost free. But it’s not a “support group” and people are free to be negative if that’s their style.

I’ve definitely been in some great online communities and have met people IRL from almost all of them that I spent effort on.

Your area of interest (“scientist specializing in the potential for online communities to benefit mental health”) is somewhat new and needs the investment. Thanks for doing that.

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Thanks! My team has one paper out here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.575224/full

And are working on getting another published where we show the results of the formal evaluation research.

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Hi all-final update. After a terrible end to the year (two adult kids with COVID, one hospitalized for a week because she developed severe colitis before the COVID appeared), we finally got the 30-minute talk with the PM company. They said they were unable to break down the costs by line item because their platform doesn’t allow it. They had told me prior to this that they were using Hostfully. During the call with the PM I chatted with a Hostfully rep online who said that users can create customized owner reports.

My guess (or perhaps naive hope?) is that the PM doesn’t know this and just thinks there’s a single report type available, but I’m not willing to stay on with them and convince her to figure out how to do that in any case. We gave our 30 day notice. They’ve since removed the listing from their website and the STR platforms and asked us which days we’ll be using it before they “release it to us”, which sounds worrisome. We can no longer see a calendar.

Thankfully we have the smartlocks installed which show us when people come and go. I plan to get out there during the week next week to have a look at how things are after the New Year’s guests leave.

Wish us luck that nothing bad happens in the final 30 days.

We’re talking with the next door neighbors next week about formally co-hosting (the wife used to do cleanings for the previous owner), so wish us luck. I’ll be scouring the boards for info on co-hosting now!

Thanks again, everyone! Your advice and support here has been invaluable in our journey.

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Wow, this sounds bonkers. Completely, totally unethical. If they have a booking, they should inform you, not ask you when you’ll be using it so that they can do whatever they want with it.

I really think you should tell them that they need to inform you the precise dates that they have bookings over the coming month, and ask them to show you evidence of that in an online STR platform’s calendar. Tell them that they should accept no further bookings and that you will be using the property yourself in all the times the property isn’t already booked.

I used to have a property manager and I thought it would be a big relief and time saver to have someone else manage my little Airbnb apartment (I work full time; I didn’t think I’d have enough time to manage an Airbnb property as well), but we had a bit of conflict – nothing overt or awful, just those sorts of unpleasant, stomach-churning, polite battles for control. The final straw was her not wanting me to enter the apartment without informing her first, even when I could see on the ABB calendar that no one was there. After that, we gave her 2 months’ notice, and she instantly said, “You can have it, I’m not doing this anymore.” It was weird but a relief for everyone, and we’ve been managing the place ourselves every since.

I find I love it! It turns out it’s not too much work. That’s partly because in Sydney, by law we can’t offer short-term rentals more than 180 days per year, so it’s only half the time, which means I can set things up so there’s a day in between each guest, so cleaning is never a mad rush. And I enjoy interacting with guests. They’ve almost all been lovely, interesting people.

So you might find that it’s really enjoyable to host yourself! The opportunity to work with the next door neighbours sounds like either a dream or a nightmare. It sounds really convenient for everyone (especially having someone right on site to keep an eye on things) and if it works well it will be fantastic. But if things go south, like they have with your property manager, then you have the additional headache of awkwardness with your neighbour!

So sorry to hear about all the illness in the family! I hope people are lots better now? I spent New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day in hospital emergency with my son who now has 8 stitches as his souvenir of 2022, but in the overall scheme of trampolining accidents, that’s relatively minor.

Happy New Year to you all! (Here in Sydney it’s already 2023.)

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Geez, now I realize why the whole time I was reading your post, I kept thinking to myself, there’s something about this that is just kind of futuristic. :wink: (really, it’s just so been so dark here all day I had no idea what time it was, lol). Happy New Year to You!!!

I hope 2023 treats you right!!! :kissing_heart: :kissing_heart: :kissing_heart: :tada: :tada: :tada:

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Bahaha yeah I’ve seen the future and… it looks pretty much the same as last year. (Humid and warm here in Sydney.)

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Many property managers (or co-hosts) charge a commission on the Accommodation fare (anywhere between 15-30%), plus they usually keep the entire cleaning fee and sometimes they don’t take any burden of the Airbnb host fee or refunds. You need be sure you read through the pricing section of your contract and make sure it is absolutely clear without any ambiguity.

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change the locks now

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Hi all! Thanks so much for your support. We got rid of the property management company and have been using property management software (Hostfully), dynamic pricing (Pricelabs) + a cleaning platform (Turno) to manage it ourselves. We recruited our next door neighbors to clean/inspect/co-host and have a direct booking site (through Hostfully) and are open on Airbnb. Since going live on Airbnb we’ve been booked every weekend and the occasional few-day stay during the week. The cleaning fees and co-host % (10% for inspections, being on hand if necessary for something a guest needs, replacing the toilet paper holder that keeps falling off the wall, being a delivery point for supplies and helping troubleshoot house systems or oversee contractors) go directly to the neighbors and I share the owner’s report (which the former PM said was not available to share) with the co-hosts so they can see what we bring in and that they get a full 10%.

So far it seems to be going great. Fingers crossed that this continues! It was a LOT of time up front to learn the PMS and around $100 USD/month for one listing, but I really like it now and the customer support seems really good.

I really appreciate this forum and everyone’s input!

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Thanks for the update! It’s great that things are going well for you, you have a co-Host, transparency in your reports and a way to direct book.

How’s your direct book experience? Some folks here have said that many of their guests seem to believe in AirCover and so are NOT direct booking. But others here are getting a great direct-book experience. I believe that it can be very valuable to get your guests to direct book so that if;/when your location becomes over-saturated with STRs that you’ll have a lot of repeat business.

So, please tell us about that. It sounds like your co-Host or co-Host’s wife is doing the cleanings. Does Turno mainly advise you of cleaners in the STR market (and they of you)?

You might want to take a look at DTravel for direct booking (I think this could be in addition to Hostfully). This link was recently posted by the owner/co-owner of this forum: Direct Booking Sites: The Key to Making More Money

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Thanks for those suggestions! I will definitely look into DTravel. I agree with your idea that repeat booking is a benefit of promoting direct bookings, so hopefully that will be a plus for us. Our area has doubled in the number of STR in the last 2 years and these continue to expand, so fingers crossed that we can start with that now. That said, we have had no direct bookings yet but haven’t done any advertising either. I’m trying to get a blog up and running (combining AI-written posts with personally-written ones, including posts about using an AI to write posts) which I’m hoping will help. We’ll also be reaching out through our networks to share the DB site.

Turno is weird for me! They apparently do a lot of prioritizing by algorithms or some other nontransparent metric, so when my cleaners signed up to use the platform (which also automates scheduling when integrated with Hostfully and payments when integrated with Stripe) they were not visible to me when I searched for cleaners in the area! I had to go to customer service chat, which then freed up my view of cleaners in the area. Apparently you have to first open up a chance for people to bid before you can take advantage of the cleaners who have signed up. But now we have the cleaner/cohost couple on the platform and a backup person, so I again have my fingers crossed that this will work.

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“lessor agrees to pay a commission of 30% of the rents collected in each month (which shall be deducted from the rents collected)"

Let me preface my reply by saying that this is our opinion and is based solely on our personal experience and for our area. I ask if other members might please refrain from ragging on me in your replies because you don’t do things this particular way and/or if our way doesn’t make sense to you.
I feel that we’re all here to help each other in our own way with our own experiences, information, and knowledge and positivity.
Thanks in advance.

I think it’s not unusual for a STR manager to base their fee to the owner on a percentage of the rent as their management fee.
Although here, I think the question is what this company considers their definition of “the rent” to be.

We are a small STR management company in the Catskill Mountains (NY) and our commission is a percentage of ONLY the base rental rate. So that’s the net rent… before cleaning and taxes.

With us, the total cleaning fee goes directly to the cleaners. We don’t get any of that. Also, the cleaning fee is not paid out of the owner’s part. It is paid by the guest/renter. So we collect the cleaning as a charge to the guest and then send it to the housekeepers.

For our area, taxes are collected by Air and they distribute it to the county treasurer.

We have NO additional fees to the guest/renter. So our base rental rate is always the same as it is listed on Air and our site. And that’s what our owners pay our commission based on.

Our owners’ statement will look like:
$ rental rate for the number of nights

  • $ our percentage

  • $ Air fee to owner’s side

  • $ expenses (supplies [at cost, no upcharge], professional repair work [that we weren’t personally able to fix].)

$ taxes (The tax is mentioned because up here, STR homeowners have to tell the county what the total tax amount received from the guests/renters was and send that information to the county. But Air sends the tax money to the county)

Perhaps this company takes the cleaning fee (and I agree that the 233.00 in the example is way overkill and will push renters away) plus any extra charges to the guest/renter plus taxes and adds all that to the base rental rate. They then takes their commission on that grand total. (???)

We get questions about our contract’s wording from our new owners every now and then. We’re glad to clarify and on occasion we’ve changed the wording.

Perhaps contact the management company and get more clarification on their verbage and terms and math calculations.

As an aside, I haven’t read everything here so I may have missed other language that’s in your STR management contract, so please take this from my limited knowledge of your contract… but we personally shy away from using terms like “lessor.”

Our thinking is that this wording is more appropriate for full time/long term rentals (which tend to be subject to a much stricter set of local and/or state regulations - in favor of the renter - than short term rentals. Depending on your area of course.).

We’ve been using “Manager” (us) and “Property Owner” (owner) in our contracts with our owners and especially in our Rental Agreements with our guests/renters.

All the best for a great STR owner future! Once you get through the thorny hedges it’s a clear sunny path! :slight_smile:

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That depends entirely on the industry. In technology and engineering interns get paid very well