I just cancelled all my bookings for the rest of this year, put my listing on snooze till 2022 and feel like the weight of the world is off my shoulders! I am going to try another site for long term booking. Airbnb blows!
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I live in the Bay Area if I want a long term renter I don’t need to give Airbnb a cut. I can put it up on Zillow or Craigslist. I am not going to rent out my house for the rest of 2020. I didn’t buy my house to rent it out as a STR. My girlfriend has a house a few blocks away so we have been renting mine out to make extra money for fun trips. Well that all went out the window when Ms. Rona swept through.
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I’m also considering not Airbnbing for a long time to come, maybe the rest of the year. If I do open back up it will have to be after the country is “re-opened” and I see there is no second surge.
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Craigslist is always a solution
ABB let you put it on snooze for that long? I was only able to do it for 6 months at a time 
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Correct. Unless something has changed extremely recently, the maximum period of time you can snooze a listing for is six months from the current date.
Kinda suggests the OP has simply delisted, as opposed to “snoozing”.
JF
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@Taconation, as @JohnF said, yes there is a six-month limit for snoozing. That’s why I started out by delisting our two rooms.
Now both of our rooms are listed again, but I blocked our whole calendar.
No idea what’s better when/if we ever decide to do Airbnb again. Like you, we think it’ll be a good long time before it’s safe—at least mid-2021. Until there’s an effective and widely available vaccine or some kind of cure.
Just out of curiosity, could a host snooze for 6 months, relist for 1day, and then snooze for 6 months? Rinse Repeat
I couldn’t find the answer to that (and Airbnb CS was wildly busy), so I delisted instead of snoozing.
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Nothing to stop you, as far as I’m aware.
JF
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I agree. As long as you make sure Instant Book is turned off so that you can’t accidentally get a booking when you “un-snooze”, you could just set a reminder to do it every few months. Ideally, set a 90 day booking window, and have a reminder every 90 days to un-snooze then re-snooze for 6 months.
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You don’t need Airbnb for short term rentals either. But so many people would rather pay the fee (which I’ve always thought was reasonable) than work to get the clients themselves.
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I think you’ve made a good call. And you don’t have to worry about Airbnb sending you professional squatters as long-term renters!
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Airbnb was great for short term renters, I made a s*@t ton of money last year and that was all due to Airbnb for sure. The problem I have with them now is they are pushing this long term rental crap and if I want a roommate or a family to rent my home permanently why would I go through Airbnb For that and give them a cut every month? Is Airbnb going to manage my rental? Take calls in the middle of the night if the toilet is clogged? Upkeep the yard? Hell no, they are going to do what they have always been doing, acting as the middle person connecting host with potential renters and making a killing off it. I can easily do all that on my own or hire a property management company to do the work for me.
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Ermm… that’s all they are, nothing else.
Why would they do that, even for STR?
JF
When I had long-term tenant-housemates, I managed everything myself and used Craigslist (free). Zillow is also free for the first property (though I never used it because I rented spare bedrooms).
However, it would be interesting to compare the fees of a property management company to AirBnB. As you note, a property management company will do the hands-on work. They also screen tenants, unlike AirBnB. I really don’t see why anyone would use AirBnB to find long-term tenants.
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I’m wondering if Zillow will see an opportunity here to do spare room/in-home host rentals. Their platform provides credit checks, background checks, info on former landlords (tenant reviews). I would think it would be a great time for them to try it out.
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This week I cancelled the reservations we had (the few left) for 2020 and blocked our calendar through the end of the year and the first quarter of next year. We’ll see when, if ever, we reopen. We are on-site hosts and while we were super close to reopening, we got cold feet as we wait for the other shoe to drop.
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That what I am saying John, there is no need to go through them if I want to rent out my house long term. Short term, 3-20 nights was fine,but long term rentals, forget it.
I mostly agree with you. I have found full-service long-term property managers that do everything for 12%. They charge owners for cleaning/maintenance/repairs, but they still manage it all.
As far as I know, Airbnb’s average fees are 15% and their minimum is 12%. They are not transparent about their guest service fees, but even if the fees are only 12% for long-term rentals, that is high for the services they provide for long-term rentals, because Airbnb doesn’t provide specific support for long-term rentals at all. In fact their policies increase the owner’s risks for long-term rentals.
The real question is: Is the value of Airbnb’s marketing is worth the extra cost? I.e. can a host get a higher price for a listing because Airbnb’s marketing increases the demand for the listing? Is there evidence of this for long-term rentals, and even if there is, does it outweigh the added risks?
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