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AirBNB/VRBO property owners, what are your best practices when it comes to vacation rentals?
I have the opportunity to purchase a house in a beach town that would double as both a vacation home for myself and a short term rental property. This would be my first foray into the world of short term rentals so I was hoping to get your general advice, guidance, and experience.
I should mention that I think I've got a pretty good grasp on the financial aspects of it, i.e. the mortgage, rental rates, fees to the town and rental platforms, taxes, insurance, etc.
I'm more curious about things such as:
- Do you recommend using an umbrella management company to handle cleaning, maintenance, landscaping, etc. or do you outsource an individual cleaning service, handyman, etc.?
- What type of "filtering" do you recommend to make sure you're renting to people who will respect the property?
- What sort of furniture, linens, etc. do you recommend?
- Are there any gotchas that you didn't expect when getting into this line of work?
Is the house currently occupied by the owner or long-term tenants? If you're buying a property that's already a permitted STVR, go for it and enjoy yourself. If it's occupied by the owner or long-term tenants, then I would respectfully ask you not to turn it into a new STVR because this reduces the overall voting population and increases the cost of housing for locals. The folks who live in resort towns are often underpaid employees in the service industry, so they're already struggling to find affordable housing.
I'm not trying to start a fight or anything, it's just that a lot of people with non-owner-occupied STVRs aren't aware of the negative externalities on the local community, and the issue is really close to my heart after a couple from Portland bought the house across the street from me and kicked out 3 low-income tenants to turn it into an expensive non-owner-occupied STVR to earn a profit in absentia. Hopefully it doesn't come off like a personal attack.
Not unrelated but in the same vein, I have a fully stocked, furnished house that would make an great AirBnb because of its 10 minute proximity to everything that its attractive in town. But its in an older neighborhood, all my neighbors are older and have been there for years so Ive chosen to only do short term rentals for now but not vacation rentals and nothing less than a couple of months - so far its been rented by some grandparents visiting their kids to decide if they want to move here, a couple of actors coming for the run of a play, and a family who sold their house and are moving to Australia as soon as they can sell off the rest of their farm. I vet the tenants the same as I do my long term tenants - credit check, references and a hefty deposit and they deal directly with me, not a company website. Id rather leave it empty than potentially tick off my neighbors with some party animals but it's also because Id like to live in the house some day and I dont want to become 'that guy'. Sorry OP, I also hope this doesnt come off as an attack, just my 2 cents on STVR.
This isn't even the problem for me. Everyone who has stayed at the rental over the last year has been quiet/respectful, but we still lost 3 members of our community in favor of transient tourists (my hometown has evolved into a regional tourist destination over the last 10-15 years). Those folks couldn't find affordable housing in our neighborhood or nearby and had to move further away from the city center. Basically, I'd rather have fun, rowdy neighbors that are part of my community than quiet tourists that turn over every 3-5 days and have no relationship with us. At that point, it's nothing more than a business because there's no long-term connection between the people and the place.
Whenever the importance of community in the context of STVRs comes up, I like to tell people this story. One night, my wife, 2 kids, and I turned off all the lights in our house to play with flashlights. We were having a blast, but then we heard a bunch of doorbell rings and aggressive knocking. It kinda scared me because they wouldn't stop, but guess what? It was my neighbor coming over to check on things because her partner is a first responder, and they thought our house was being robbed since the lights were all off except for flashlights. She put herself in danger by coming over in person to make sure everything was okay! You don't get that relationship with STVRs.
I appreciate the feedback. Yes, the ones we're looking at are currently STVR (learned a new acronym today).
However, our true intent is to have the house for ourselves much of the time and to use rentals to chip into the mortgage payments. In other words, I plan to spend as much time there as possible (including getting to know the local community) but would want to rent it out other times to lower the financial impact. I'm definitely not looking at this from a profit point of view, as stupid as I may be, but rather a vacation home.