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Do you mean to say that VRBO rather than Airbnb “does not give a lot of options for fees.” I ask because the lower cleaning fee is not on Airbnb but on VRBO. And the $90 charge is shown in the VRBO column.
But the numbers work as you suggest. I had assumed that the $90 was for damage protection, which VRBO offers but I suppose it is more likely that it is the cleaning fee.
As an aside the VRBO platform fee did not make sense to me but I didn’t get into it because it was an aside to the main analysis. The Airbnb fee doesn’t look right either. Either this Host is choosing to pay the Airbnb fees, or the spreadsheet is showing the platform fees that the Guest pays, not what the Host pays.
No, I said it right. Vrbo has a lot of options for fees - lots of different names. AirBnB does not. So the PM added the $90 into the cleaning fee on AirBnB, making the cleaning fee higher.
Bingo! As you should for any investment. Vacation rentals started as a way to defray the cost of a second home, which makes it hard to raise prices enough to cover costs AND make a return on your investment.
I was just rounding it out. Don’t know how many beds the OP has in their cabin, but $90 to do laundry on a 2 night booking for 3 people sounds really high to me.
I like your idea of hiring a college student. Perhaps you can find out if they offer a degree in hospitality. If they do, maybe you can talk to the head of the dept and offer internships. The intern would need to take care of details such as finding cleaners, scheduling cleaning, checking the place after guests check out and writing the reviews. It would be great hands on training for the college kids and you can even pay them a stipend (gas and lunch money).
Interns normally don’t get a salary. My daughter was an intern and didn’t get paid, not even a stipend. However, she did receive college credits, I think it was 3 credits.
Which is exploitation. Just because something is done doesn’t make it morally defensible.
My daughter also interned, with a high fashion designer in NY. She was expected to work long hours with no pay, and couldn’t afford to pay her rent or buy food- I had to help her out with that. Furthermore the designer held a fancy party for the rich in the Hamptons, and used the interns, who were there to learn the ins and outs of fashion design, to babysit the kids of the wealthy partygoers, who could well afford to pay for childcare. This basically amounts to slavery.
And there is no way on earth I would let an inexperienced college student write my guest reviews, nor check to make sure the listing was clean enough for guests.
In the UK most companies pay interns a living wage. If you don’t all that happens is students from wealthier backgrounds are the only ones who can afford to do internships and therefore are the only ones who gain the experience to make them more employable.
It’s exploitative and retains the status quo where those from wealthier and mainly white backgrounds get the pick of graduate jobs because they can afford the best universities and to do the unpaid work experience needed to get their feet on the career ladder.
In any case I wouldn’t want an untrained student working as my cohost when it’s a role that needs extensive experience and know how.
My daughter works on animated films and told me that Disney is notorious for getting interns to work long hours and of course, not even a stipend.
She was lucky that she was an intern for a video game studio and the company at least paid for her lunch and if she was asked to work late, they also paid for her dinner and a cab ride back home. Most interns don’t get that.
She did get college credit for it and when she graduated, they offered her a job. I hope your daughter received college credit for all the long hours she worked.
I agree that interns should be paid. Unfortunately, in the USA many companies do not pay their interns. Perhaps that’s why universities give college credit because they know it’s unfair. My daughter did two internships and received a total of 6 credits which was helpful because tuition for SVA is way too expensive.
She actually wasn’t in school anymore. She had graduated from fashion design school, worked for other designers in Toronto and Montreal, and got paid, albeit minimum wage not in line with her abilities. She also had her own website with her own clothing designs and was selling her clothes in several stores, but had little time to work on her own stuff when working long hours for others just to pay her living expenses.
She took that intern job in NY as it was with a top runway designer and thought it might lead to bigger and better things.
In fact, she changed career paths shortly after, went back to school to get her Montessori teacher’s license, and now runs her own Montessori pre-school. Education being a much more socially responsible career than convincing people they need to be constantly buying new clothes, which is one of the main reasons she switched
Me, too. My son went there through sixth grade and it was a great experience. He also interned for no pay last summer with a federal judge. But he was able to borrow money (federal student loan program) to support himself while he wasn’t being paid and he got credit at law school for the internship.
Good news is that the experience he got there helped him get a much better internship next summer - one that pays very nicely!
I’m really impressed by my daughter’s hard work to open her school. She had to write up proposals, schedule and go through health and safety inspections, as well as approval from the Montessori association, and go into debt to purchase all the materials and outfit the place. Then waited weeks for the guy who owns the building she rented to put in a bathroom that met codes. She spent weeks checking out Marketplace to buy second hand kids furniture, repairing it and painting it, sewing covers for napping foamies, on and on.
It all paid off- a year into the business and she is full and there’s a waiting list.
I have the same type of deal, a cabin in a remote location with limited local services. Ultimately what hosts in the area seem to end up doing is building a relationship with an experienced local (sometimes a neighbor) who can be on hand should there be a problem, but then continue to own all the responsibilities of dealing with guests via the App, arranging cleaning etc, which all can be done remotely. So the ‘property manager’s responsibilities are limited to managing trouble. This is either a flat fee or a sliding scale based on the number of callouts. This does require the hosts being able to turn up at the property every 4-6 weeks to periodically check the property, be on hand for repairs coordination etc. (The upside is you then get to enjoy your property & build relationships with your neighbors while you’re there). It’s either this kind of hybrid or you pay through the nose.
I have hired quite a few property managers for long term rental investment properties. I have never hired one for my STR, though, which I’ve had for 1 year.
PMs must be very carefully screened. Ideally they are also licensed real estate agents, that helps, but you can find good ones without this.
I agree with @muddy and I would never have guests do the cleaning!! Plus-------I am sworn to secrecy but let me put it this way-------Soon you will have to use VRBO ONLY if you want guests to clean house.
I would terminate this PM as soon as possible. There are red flags all over this.
Next I would find a local cleaning company or individual that is carefully screened to do cleaning. Use Next Door and Craig’s List to find people if you don’t have good word of mouth contacts. Go to the nearest laundromat and see if there are business cards tacked to a board. (If you can’t find a housekeeper you do have a problem.)
“Nice” is pretty much irrelevant when screening people. References are often not worthwhile because people lie, but try anyway. In the end you’ll just take a chance on someone.
If you want a totally hands off approach, you do nothing but cash the checks, then I believe long term rental is a superior way to make money because it is much easier to get an economical PM that way. However, not all markets are good for LTR and your market doesn’t sound ideal from here.
If you knew the area had trouble hiring skilled trades and housekeepers, then you deliberately bought an investment property with risks. So now you have to deal with those risks.
The really good property managers in your area will be hard to find. They are working in the back of some real estate office, or they work at home, or even out of their vehicle. No sign, just a cell phone. They don’t advertise because they don’t need to, their business is word of mouth, and they have all the clients they can handle.
Therefore for the time being I would seek out a co-host who lives close to the cabin. You say “younger co-host” perhaps because you want cheap. Quality is rarely cheap.
My attitude would be, I need an education so I need to hire somebody who knows more than me, and I will pay for my education by paying them and observing and learning.
To find a co host I would contact all the STRs close to mine and see if any of those hosts are interested. If that fails then I would start calling real estate offices to see if any agents would be interested in a side gig like this. As a last resort I would use Craig’s List or Next Door, or post signs in grocery stores and the like.
I’m sure everything will work out eventually! Wishing you patience and best of luck!
That will be VERY interesting if it comes to pass. Lots of whole-house rentals will probably stop listing on AirBnB if they prohibit you from asking the guests to do some exit housekeeping.
