In part 2 of our do’s and don’ts of short terms rentals, I’ll address location and maintenance of your rental property.
Choose a good location
If you are considering good areas for setting up a short-term rental, I had success (partially) because I was close to a major hospital (as a number of my guest were visiting sick or ailing family members), and I was also close to a major university (as I had a number of guests visiting their son or daughter from out-of-province and sometimes out-of-country).
Managing your rental
Now let’s address the care and maintenance of your short-term rental: It is important to really learn the platform (if you are using AirBnB or VRBO). These platforms are very user-friendly, but you will want to manage things in your calendar like the following: If you allow same-day check-in’s or not, check in times, check out times, and the latest time a potential guest is able to book your suite so you aren’t scrambling at the last minute.
Caring for your rental
Also, do yourself a favour and hire an excellent cleaner. (I know some of you will say “but I want to clean it and leave little mints on pillows and keep all my profits”).
Trust me… this gets old.
I used an experienced cleaner that specialized in cleaning short-term rentals. She and her team left a locked box filled with soap, shampoo, and toiletry replacement items. She also purchased an extra set of linens, covers, hand towels, bath towels, etc – and all they did was swap out one set for the other on every clean and did the laundry off-site. They even had replacement items with costs in case anything was stained or damaged, and they would always take pictures if anything was out of place, stained or damaged so that I could (in the very rare case) make a claim to AirBnB.
Personally, I would consider getting into this business again, but I would want to do it somewhere tropical and spend my winters on-site!!
Jason