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Damage Claims and Screening Guests on Airbnb · Short Term Rental Problems and Solutions

• Jeremiah: I was wrong to expect cleaners to be honest and hardworking. I was wrong to expect guests to act like me. Have you realized yet that it's not all sunshine and five-star reviews? That means you're in the right place. Today we're talking about damage from guests and some of the lessons I've learned from the years of making claims on Airbnb through their resolution center. That's because this is the community where we talk about the gross, awkward, and the operational messes. As well as the real strategies that help you keep going instead of quitting. Because this industry is somewhere where you can win big, or you can ignore education and you can quit. Welcome to Short Term Rental Problems and Solutions. Let's get right into today's email. my husband and I recently had a guest who had a party. ⁓ booked last minute, they had a bunch of cars, and when they checked out, my cleaner freaked out from the condition of the house. There's vomit in the hot tub, there's a broken picture frame on the floor that fell off the wall, and the trash bin was overflowing outside. The surfaces like floors and furniture are sticky and there's no explanation. Strangest among them is that there was a ladder in my bar area, and I have no idea where it came from. What would be your approach to an Airbnb claim? This will be my first one. Thanks, Julie. Julie, ⁓ my first piece of advice ⁓ to never make a big decision when you're in a valley. Life has ups and downs, and your perspective as well as your capacity to make wise decisions is limited when you're in the valleys. When we are ⁓ the middle, like in the climb up the hill, or on our way back down the mountain, those are good times to determine your course. Like you can obviously make course corrections. But big life-changing decisions happen in emotional moments like this. a lot of people quit short-term rentals after a guest like this, it's not the end of the The second thing I would say is accept that you do not need to understand why the guests did what they did. I learned very early on from a landlord, believe it or not, that he doesn't try to explain tenant behavior. ⁓ And I like that approach. Like people will do what they do. You can rent to weird tenants, can rent to weird people, they pay the same green money. We don't have to understand their behavior, don't have to understand what causes them to act this way. that guest that you just hosted, they had a party. They left a lot of sticky surfaces. They vomited in the hot tub. These are a lot of things that would be very concerning. And we can try and rationalize, we can try and make sense of it. Like maybe they vomited in the hot tub because I didn't have a bucket in the house. But then we get too bogged down in these details and in the weeds sometimes. I'm going to recommend that you just learn from this experience what you can, implement those strategies for the future for sure. Just don't draw conclusions using experimental probability with such a limited data set. Now, I know I was a math teacher, and that phrase might not make sense to a lot of other people, you can't take this one guest ⁓ a representation of what every guest is going to be. if you're going to determine guest behavior is going to be, ⁓ you have to go from very large sample size. You know, take 15, 20 guests and try and figure out what is Typical, right? But in this situation, this is the first issue that you've had at your property that was a big enough deal for you to go after an Airbnb resolution. So my recommendation is to, know, just implement some strategies, ⁓ Maybe provide some more cleaning products for your guests to use, more trash bags, more cleaners, formula 409 ⁓ dish And just move on. So the third thing I would say before we get into the bulk of answering your question is that this experience probably seems like a worst case scenario to you, but the way your email was going, I was expecting some serious damage when all I actually see is a ton of cleaning. And that's not to make light of, you know, the issue with the guest. But don't see anything damaged here that's actually significant. So I think that this is probably being so amplified because of your relationship with your cleaner. And I get it completely. When you have a good cleaner, you treat them like family. Any disrespect to your house means additional work for them, means something that we can and probably should take personally. The thing is, this guest wasn't thinking about your cleaner. And ⁓ not a personal attack. A lot of times cleaners look at, you know, their fixed rate for cleaning your house as something that requires a little work versus a lot of work. So in this acceptable range that they're not going to charge you extra for, you might have, you know, only one bed was used and that everything in the house was left clean. in the last case, and like the worst case, it's like everything is dirty, all surfaces have ⁓ some of attention required. Every single bed was made, all the laundry, like the house was fully used. We've got, you know, ⁓ dirt tracked in on floor. We've got to mop. everything needs attention. All surfaces need to wiped down. ⁓ Like it it can be quite intense. like every cleaner kind of has a limit ⁓ to their ⁓ range of acceptable cases. when they beyond that. ⁓ ⁓ there's a lot of things that are impacted and it's not necessarily reflective of how bad your guest was. they're being a bit of a drama queen, which ⁓ completely ⁓ they're very protective of your property, which is a good thing for a cleaner to be. and are ⁓ getting you ready an extra fee because they want to extra for this. being a bit dramatic because they want to charge like double their cleaning fee. this is a full like deep clean kind of situation. ⁓ And in reality, this is their reaction when they get to the property. It's not necessarily reaction later on. Because in reality, a lot of these surfaces were already going to be cleaned. So have to just tell your cleaner in that situation, and I'm sure you did this, but you have to just tell them in that situation, I already know we're gonna have to charge the guest extra for this. I'm gonna put a resolution through. ⁓ The is going to pay extra. just keep track of your time. How much time you're spending there versus what you normally do. And I want to make sure that I compensate you for that. Now, your cleaner may have been anticipating that it was only going to take her three hours today. And now it's going to take her six. But that might not be outside of the ordinary. Maybe if there's a large group of people, she expects it to take five. So in that situation, maybe it's only taking her an extra hour. But the reason this is a big deal is because it was unexpected. And we shouldn't take that lightly. It's just that, you know, we're talking about 18% more work, 20% more work. And if they want to charge double for an extra 20% of work, I don't really know if that's necessarily fair. But in this situation, we're not negotiating with our cleaners. We're just telling them, let's definitely charge extra. Once the house is clean, send me an invoice for what you think is fair. And that is probably the best way to approach it with your cleaner. ⁓ I'm gonna get ⁓ answering the ⁓ I'll get into how I approach guest damage, and then we can discuss some of the strategies to screen guests. So, ⁓ first is photos and evidence. if you don't have a picture of it, Airbnb says it didn't happen. ⁓ unfortunate. this is particularly troublesome when there's an issue like smoke, right? ⁓ when there's a smoke smell in a house. ⁓ And can make a claim that it smelled like smoke, and then the guest can make a claim that it didn't smell like smoke. ⁓ Airbnb generally will fall on the side that produces some sort of documentation. Like the guest can say it didn't smell like smoke when I was there, it didn't smell when I left. And the host can make a claim that they did. Now ⁓ it smelled like smoke, if it didn't smell like smoke, is of insurance fraud. So you don't want to do that. ⁓ because at the end of the day, Airbnb kind of is an insurance Air cover is an insurance policy. not going to you do that ever. when it's applicable, just make sure that you have a decent invoice for remediating the smell. like text from people are on site, screenshotted with timestamps, like things like that are important. but as soon as your cleaner arrives at the property and they identify these issues like the vomit the hot tub and so on and so forth, you're gonna need to get those photos over immediately you need to start preparing for a claim. As soon as that sort of stuff comes in, Even if eventually you decide not to make a claim, you're still gonna want to have all those things collected the proper amount of time so that there's no opportunity for evidence to change, for anything to be missing. ⁓ can ask for photos of all issues. ⁓ so sticky surfaces is a difficult thing to ⁓ identify. it's a difficult to take a photograph of, but it will have to be listed ⁓ in the ⁓ the invoices. So the other thing is if you don't have a photo for something, you have to have an invoice for it. And you're in a better position if you have both photos and invoices. Any kind of documentation you have is going to be beneficial. keep in mind that Airbnb doesn't review videos in their claims. in order for you to upload a video, you're going to need to submit the claim and then they have to send you an email requesting ⁓ you to upload file. And then you're not uploading it to the cloud, you're emailing that. So like the video has to be low enough resolution or a short enough video that it can be emailed. So I think that's like 20 megabytes or less. So just another thing to keep in mind, they highly prefer the pictures, be JPEG, So ⁓ you're gonna want to, ⁓ you know, get Plenty of pictures, take things in time, and everything should be quickly. Like you should get all of this evidence together quickly as you can. ⁓ Now, ⁓ if don't have a photo for it, ⁓ I would caution against using AI to create the damage. So ⁓ I know like you can get a picture of your house and then you can ask AI to add in a dirty mop bucket or a damaged. bicycle or something to that effect. I know that that's possible. So does Airbnb. editing your photographs like this could constitute insurance fraud because it's not actual evidence. ⁓ But second reason for that is I've actually shared photos with people before and they've said, hey, I can tell this was edited by AI. So there may be some information in the metadata of your file or like coded into ⁓ these That enables insurance companies to identify fraud. And you just don't want to do it. Just get photos of the actual damage and use those photos. the only editing you can do is maybe making it lighter, darker, cropping it, whatever. But I would not recommend adding things into the picture or taking things out of the photo for this purpose. Now we that this stuff all has to come together quickly. So I'd say absolutely soon as possible. You do have a 13 day window from when the guest checks out to make your claim. but the sooner the better. And I would not hold and wait for better documentation either. So I've actually written invoices for my cleaners in the past ⁓ facilitate getting these invoices together quickly and processing the claim. Because, know, obviously if you allow too much time to go by, Airbnb is less likely to accept your claim, or they're less likely to find it as credible because of the amount of time that's passed. So again, I just recommend getting these things together as quickly as possible. If you to create an invoice for somebody, just make sure that you use information that's actually accurate. ⁓ actual amount is accurate, the cleaning service name, ⁓ handyman's name, email, phone number, ⁓ their mailing address. Like all those things should be accurate. And things that can be found on Google should the Airbnb representatives actually look this stuff up to verify the accuracy of the invoice. ⁓ if you have another, invoice from that cleaning service or another invoice from that handyman, you're gonna want to copy that as closely as you can. I mentioned that you're going to be dealing with AI let's get into that. ⁓ So this resolution process, I'm pretty sure ⁓ the specialized that you can only email is just an AI team. ⁓ And ⁓ haven't actually got real confirmation on that, but I think the consensus among hosts and Airbnb representatives is that ⁓ their team is a bunch of people, even though they've emailed me, After like insult saying, no, it's people, ⁓ why can't they call me then? Why can't I speak to somebody? And why can't we escalate this? And why can't we accept that they're fallible? so Airbnb has AI reviewing these ⁓ reimbursement requests, So, order to increase chances getting this all approved. I recommend using AI against AI. You gotta fight fire with fire, right? ⁓ is the prompt into Claude or ⁓ or whatever you want to use. I'm most familiar ChatGPT, but that's just because I haven't made the Claude leap yet. so the prompt would be: I want you to develop the script for a reimbursement claim for my Airbnb guest. Your text should be up to 2500 characters. I will first send you a summary of the claim in my own words, then I will share the photographic evidence, then the invoices, then I will share with you the articles from Airbnb relating to making a claim. Then you should ask me clarifying questions on key details, one at a time, allowing me to respond to one question at a time. When you are done asking questions, you should tell me what parts of the claim seem weak to you and give me the opportunity to defend my position. When I feel like we are ready to make the claim, I will prompt you to generate the script of the claim. Sounds like a pretty decent prompt, right? And this is actually the process that you're going to go through. Go through first with Chat GPT or Claude or Gemini or whatever, and have it generate like up to 2500 characters, a defense, a description, claim that you are making to air cover. but ⁓ it to make that, you have to actually train it. It doesn't already know ⁓ to make a claim. So you're gonna want to feed into it Airbnb's policies in order for it to reference those policies, ⁓ is again something that it will do if it's ⁓ that information. But doesn't already know this stuff. Now you can train AI on how to do this one time and then have it store that in memory and then It'll be easier to go back to it each time. this is, Julie, this is what I would recommend doing. So step number two ⁓ is follow through that script of your description, your evidence, everything The resource center is on airbnb.com. just click, the little hamburger menu to where it says ⁓ resource center, type in some questions on there, ⁓ like how to make an Airbnb damage claim, and pull up an article on this. You take that link, share it with your AI. ⁓ So it can analyze that page, so on and so forth. I would probably pull like five or six articles. And then as you go through that resolution process, I would take the terms and conditions from Airbnb as you're going through it about what works and what doesn't work in case AI wants to edit and change things. So step three, the next step in your claim process is to make this request reimbursement to the guest. So you're gonna request that the guest pays you back for the damage. hey, there was some extra cleaning to do. my cleaner got very upset. She actually cried on the phone with me. Please would you consider paying this? I've already paid the cleaner and I feel like I shouldn't have to be in position. So I would ask you to do this and this blah, blah, blah. Recognize that you're speaking to the guest here. It first goes to the guest. A lot of times they just don't respond. Sometimes they just hit deny and they don't respond at all. they do respond and you have a conversation. Remember ⁓ that once you involve Airbnb, conversation is going to be reviewed. All of your messages with the guest. So you're not going to want admit fault. You're not going to want to say that your cleaner might have been, you know. ⁓ Dramatizing the situation, anything like that, that could hurt your chances of getting this claim approved. you make that request to the guest, remember ⁓ they might have the opportunity to leave a review. So the timing on when you submit this, the way you treat that guest at this level, ⁓ it's it's very that you be diplomatic. Once the guest responds that they're not going to reimburse you, they're not going to pay this, then you click to involve Airbnb. Now, it's very important that you remember this next part. When you made your request to the guest, you uploaded all your pictures, files, invoices, all of that. The guest had the opportunity to review those things in order to, you know, approve and pay or not. Well, now that you've chosen to involve Airbnb. You have to do that again. All those files need to be re-uploaded because if you click to involve Airbnb and you don't add in all that evidence, Airbnb may never see that evidence. And your claim could be denied, which means that you're you're stuck. You know, there's there's not a whole lot you can do now. so that's the important part is just make sure that when you involve Airbnb, you upload all of that information again. You take and copy and paste the script from AI that was generated explaining your defense, your position. You enter that into the correct place where it says, I think, description of the ⁓ And after that, you just have to answer the phone, check your email regularly, and respond to messages. So ⁓ Airbnb probably send you a confirmation email saying that they've received your ⁓ reimbursement for ⁓ guest and you've just gotta, you know, be responsive, like a good host, right? So ⁓ when they ask questions, if they ask for video, this actually the point where they'll send you an email requesting that video be uploaded. And then you can email them back. I wouldn't count on it. So in the original claim, I would probably add screenshots of the video and I would make mention of that in the description. That if they would like to review the video, which their screenshots uploaded, that they can email you so that you can forward that. remember, mentioned that the guest may still be able to leave a review. So ⁓ could. Determine that they're going to leave a bad review because now you're charging them for damage that they felt was completely normal. So they might think that it's completely normal that there's, you know, vomit in the hot tub, or they might say that somebody just spilled their, I don't know, ⁓ bloody Mary, Into the hot tub. ⁓ it came across from your cleaners that there's vomit in the hot tub. So you want to be very diplomatic at this point. And if they didn't leave a review, you have to keep all of these things in mind. But if they already left a review, all bets are off. You can be evil, mean, angry, upset, whatever. whatever helps you get this claim to work out. The is, if they left a review, then you don't have to worry about them changing it, taking it down, anything like that. But if they didn't leave a review yet, they might leave you ⁓ bad review ⁓ of this reimbursement request. So why I say you need to exercise caution, ⁓ is their to leave a review is also 13 days. And that's the amount of time that you have to make a claim. If they're going to leave you a bad review because of the claim, my strong recommendation is that you bait the guest into admitting this in the messages. Because anything other than like a direct admission of guilt is likely to ⁓ you with a bad review that you can't get taken down. Airbnb doesn't ⁓ any common sense ⁓ it comes to enforcing their retaliatory reviews policies. They are definitely not on the same page. They ⁓ are not here to protect hosts and they don't care if guests stop coming to your house. ⁓ this bad review, it doesn't have to make any sense. It's just that Airbnb is not going to take it down. so good luck. but the best case that you have at making that claim is by getting the guests to admit that they would have left a good review had you not charged them for this additional cleaning. I don't know if you can use AI to bait them into this ⁓ it's so like back and forth, you know. But maybe you can. I just don't know for sure. My recommendation is just be careful. and then the last question about the reimbursement is when will I get the money? ⁓ ⁓ it's like one week. there are some factors that'll cause this to be delayed by one, two, three, four, five weeks. I've seen these resolutions take A long time in some circumstances. I had a guest ⁓ the first week of June, and this is now June 30th, and we are still processing through this claim with that guest. This is on the third week now, and you would normally expect these things to happen quickly, but that guest actually purchased insurance. They purchased damage protection, then they ended up causing ⁓ to get like $1,500 in fines because of their behavior that was. photographed by the HOA. So we actually have to put that whole claim through the insurance process. And the insurance company did contact us. They said they're still reviewing all the details, but they asked us for our mailing address, which I'm hoping means that we're going to get a check in the mail. I just don't know. either way, you know, the guest is pretty much uninvolved. You know, like we told them what was going on. Hey, your behavior caused these fines to come out. Not going to leave you a bad review. just would like you to be cooperative and admit the truth when your insurance company asks you what exactly happened because they're going to be reviewing this evidence. ⁓ there's no point to saying, ⁓ that's not us, because it was. And your insurance will cover this. these claims take a while, sometimes they don't. usually it's done quickly. had a property one time a property that I managed for all of like 1.5 months. ⁓ she was a good fit for our program or our management strategies. long story short, Some damage was caused by the guest, but it was improper installation of the amenity. I knew it, and the homeowner knew it. And I told the homeowner, look, this hot tub cover lift is broken because it was poorly installed. I was like, who installed this? Because they're at fault. And she said, ⁓ that was my husband. And ⁓ conversation kind of stopped there for a day. And then she followed up and said, Have you submitted the claim yet? And I was like, No, I haven't submitted the claim yet. It wasn't the guests' fault. It was the installer's fault. And she said, Well, Airbnb is like a billion dollar corporation. They're not going to care about this, you know, $150 claim. Put in the claim. So I felt like I didn't really have any any choice in the matter. And when I requested that the guest pay this amount, which was like $165, they paid it. And I felt terrible. that was one of the things that ended our relationship is I I hate being ordered and micromanaged. I'll certainly do what's in the best interest of my client whenever it's legal and ethical. And in this situation, it was kind of a gray area. because it wasn't clear that the improper was the fault. ⁓ At the time, I said, you know there's probably a 65% chance that it's just because this was improperly installed. when I found the product on Amazon, it said it had a weight limit of like 90 pounds. So that meant like it could have been the guest, but in its current installation, it probably was only able to hold like maybe 20 pounds. Anyway, that's getting into a whole another topic. If you want details on that, I'd be happy to share them. ⁓ maybe offline or in a future episode. Email info @ galvanizedmanagement.com if you want some details. Now, how about screening guests? Jeremiah, what do you do to screen guests? How do we prevent this kind of damage from happening in the first place? there's a lot of things that you can do to screen your guests, and this is going to surprise you and it might even scare you a little bit. ⁓ ⁓ not screen guests. I barely do. I do only in circumstances where it's required by the township, the homeowner, or some other circumstance. Okay. So I want to use the analogy of avoiding a car accident, Car crash avoidance. you cannot control who drives near you. ⁓ Right? like you can't control who's going to book your house. bad guests use every platform. They use booking.com, I think the most ⁓ they use VRBO and they use Airbnb. ⁓ And they instant book, sometimes they don't use instant book. ⁓ sometimes they have perfectly fine reviews from other hosts. Sometimes it's their first reservation ever. You can, however, control where you are driving. So there's certain things that you have control over for accident avoidance, and there's certain things that you don't have control over. you cannot drive defensively all time. You'll slow down traffic. You might even cause an accident through your defensive driving. Similarly, hosting defensively could cause you to hinder your performance. It might even generate bad guest experiences. One of those factors is instant book. Airbnb has actually said that your listing will get more visibility and more bookings if you have instant book on. Now a lot of hosts determine, ⁓ all right, I'll have instant book on, but only for well-qualified, like well-reviewed guests. ⁓ And that's well and good. It's just you're limiting your performance. If you have instant book on for everybody, this helps your conversion rate. Because those first-time guests, which Airbnb says is like, I think I don't know the statistic anymore. I think it's like 40% of the reservations are done by first-time guests who've never, you know, gone on a trip before using Airbnb. think that is changing now though, because now, like when I look at a reservation, I might see like all six guests on there. they're getting trips without actually the primary booker. ⁓ not sure. How that works exactly, but nevertheless, instant book makes a difference. ⁓ having on, even if the is not well reviewed ⁓ or experienced, I think is gonna your conversion rate. It's gonna enhance your visibility, and it's gonna ultimately allow you to do the thing that I think causes less damage, which is have higher prices. In a similar manner, like hosting defensively could cause you more harm than good. So it could cause poor guest experiences. It could cause visibility with the algorithm. And if you want to learn more about the algorithm, I've got two episodes out ⁓ about that. think it's episode 20 and 23. I just as example of this, I leave instant book on, ⁓ and there's two different versions of book. ⁓ one is for well-reviewed guests and then the other is just complete instant book. Anybody can make a reservation. my recommendation for visibility and to help your conversion rate is to have it on for everybody. But because I don't do ⁓ as screening as maybe some other hosts do. understand though, too, ⁓ you can drive safely without slowing down traffic and late. Like you can just be situationally aware. And that's what we do. We are situationally aware. So here's some guest screening that I do do. I watch for last-minute reservations. I think parties generally Like a last minute kind of thing. watch for reservations from locals. If they tell me that they're from Mount Pocono and they're booking a house in Tobyhanna ⁓ going to be ⁓ cautious with that guest. I watch for other types of red flags. If they mention to me that they don't have ⁓ driver's license because of a recent DUI, ⁓ like guests might say things that will cause you to be, ⁓ know, on the lookout. I look at the guests profile, I look at their reviews. ⁓ just ⁓ I saw a guest review that said that the guest ⁓ brought in people who are unauthorized and they left a lot of messes when they left. was a translation, so it didn't really, you know, come across very clearly. ⁓ But then I was actually at the guest's host profile. And as a host, they have a terrible profile. They've got like two stars for this, three stars for that. And I think probably an average of 3.8. This is terrible. I am on edge with this guest. I am watching them closely. I'm going to be monitoring the cameras very closely in 45 minutes when they check in. going to be looking out for these kinds of issues. And we actually sent the guest a message warning them of this, making them aware that we saw their reviews. We are trusting them to take care of the place for us, notifying them that there's a lot of cameras here. a guest having a party that's going to be doing something shady is gonna hear a message like that and be like, okay, ⁓ can I still get a full refund if I cancel? And the answer is yes, absolutely. I don't want to host you if you're going to, Give us a problem, Cause damage, that sort of Now, is possible for somebody have a party and not cause damage? Yes, absolutely. And Julie, I would say that that's kind of what happened for you. I mean, a picture frame falling off a wall is I'm gonna guess a $20 picture frame. Now it could be much more, I get that. at the end of the day, like this is just excessive cleaning and it's gonna cost maybe $300 to get that hot tub emptied out and refilled, washed all those different types of things, all those inside the house, an extra $75 for that. Like I would this to be $300, $400. And it's a kind of claim that Airbnb is going to process without too much trouble. What we're worried about is those guests that are going to get us fines from the township, HOA, or the state police. What we're looking out for are those guests that are gonna have too many people on the bed and they just break it. It just breaks completely. looking out for like I just heard about a guest that jumped off the loft in a chalet and they fell down onto the next floor ⁓ and they crushed a table. I was like, was it a WWF guest? Or is it like a professional wrestler? Was The Rock at your house? no, that wasn't it. It was just a really, really drunk guy, you know, and he was getting in some sort of a fight with somebody and whatever. But like, ⁓ this sort of thing it does happen sometimes, but like that entire claim got covered. Like the cost of that coffee table completely replaced. That was all taken care of. These are not big issues when you're able to solve the problems. you've all probably heard the horror stories, but like I've also heard of people getting in car accidents. You know, I still drive a lot. I do like 30,000 miles a year on my car. yes, there are case but if you are situationally aware, ⁓ situationally aware, I was getting ⁓ I got off topic. ⁓ So I I I watch the cameras on the driveway. Some other things I do is I advertise the property So I am not trying to make a house that's really attractive to 17 year olds. I'm not trying to make this perfect for prom, you know, like prom nights. ⁓ I'm not trying to advertise this property as a party house that a fraternity would really feel comfortable renting. trying to make this out to be for families, for couples, for ⁓ know, affluent getaways. We're looking for those folks who are educated, who are, ⁓ know, ⁓ take care of the spot, that feel a sense of responsibility. these are difficult to explain ⁓ in practice how we it mindfully, but like. Julie, your property does have a bar. You mentioned that there was a ladder in the bar, which I mean, put that thing on marketplace and sell it. Ladders go like a hundred bucks or more. you have a bar your property. So, like, I might consider ⁓ scaling that down, advertising it less, turning it into something that would attract a more responsible crowd. ⁓ Because just having a bar, Neon lights, I'm thinking like old scratched up pool table. don't know if that's what your listing is like, but like some of these things attract like a rowdy crowd. And a ⁓ ⁓ bar is one of those things. So it's just something to be ⁓ of. ⁓ you can make a bar more like a nightclub, more like an upscale kind of thing by having like martini glasses and wine glasses and bottles of wine ⁓ and giving Bar like a Tuscany feel, you know, giving it like a wine-tasting of theme rather than, you know, ice ⁓ like a a college rager kind of theme. So ⁓ thinking through stuff like that really what I'm getting at when I say advertising the property mindfully. I also have high pricing. sort of. Now, what you probably heard when I said high pricing was my minimum nightly rate is And that's not the case. when we talk about revenue management, I am not setting a minimum nightly rate unless one is put on me by a property owner. and I've had that happen too. And it's like the kiss of death. certain properties are not well priced they are priced every night at the minimum that that property owner is to accept for it. so ⁓ this is the part that's gonna you. is of the screening. Processes or the screening practices I've seen people ⁓ do in the Airbnb industry that I do not agree with, that I do not do. I can explain every single one of them, but I'm gonna go through kind of quickly instead. I not have age restrictions unless it's required by like the township, the HOA, or the property owner. I leave book on for all guests, not just the ones who are well reviewed. I allow guests. with pets and the maximum number of pets I set at five, which is the maximum. leave the window for new reservations ⁓ be up as late as is practical. What I mean by this is like a guest could check in today if the house is empty all the way up until 11 p.m. Because we have codes on our doors, we have automations that'll send them the messages and everything else. If the house is ready for a check-in, then it's available on the platform. And if it's available on the platform and it's ready for a check-in, the guest can check in. Like that can happen all the way up to 11 p.m. Now there are restrictions on this, like if I have to register a guest first, if it's a gated community, if there's all these other parameters, right? ⁓ I'm gonna keep that as late as is practical. And even for the the HOAs, where like if I do the guest registration less than 48 hours prior to check in, it's an extra $75 bucks. still have that open. Like they can still ⁓ the house and in. I found a couple of things happen in that situation. One is they might be coming from another house inside that same community. The second thing is it's probably worth it. Like the extra $75 as a late fee for registering the guest a little bit late, you're still gonna make more money than if you were empty. You know, and I know there's risk associated with this, but it's been worth it to me. Because the average guest, I can lower my rent by $75 to get them in there on a night that normally would just be vacant. I do not require a picture ID. I do not make the guest sign a contract outside of Airbnb. I do not require a deposit from the guest. I do not have more than one camera at my properties. And I only require guests' personal information when it's absolutely necessary. I know that there's plenty of hosts out there who are looking for that info. They are asking the guest to provide emails for every person who's going to be there. An ID, a photo of everybody's driver's license, the registration for the cars, an emergency contact. You've got to be kidding me. Why would you need somebody's emergency contact? If there's an emergency, the ambulance is gonna come or the police are gonna come, they're gonna take them away. Why would they be asking you for an emergency contact? You're just the Airbnb host. I'm mention the pets max that might seem a little extreme to you, but let me just qualify it for you, Episode two, I think I did, ⁓ is about pets and why you should allow pets. if is searching for a rental with four pets, then they're putting that into their search criteria. And even though your property is pet friendly, they're not seeing it as an option if your maximum is two. Also. They may be putting five pets because they have like five little rabbits in one little cage. This is not a big deal to me. Those little rabbits are not going to cause any damage. They're in a cage. They're taken care of. But that's still five pets. so I go the opposite direction. don't want to be pet-free. I want to be pet friendly. I want to encourage those guests to find my listing. I can charge higher nightly rates and still get booked. Because I have these filters wide open. The more people your listing shows up for, the more bookings you get. The more bookings you get, the higher your nightly rate goes. The higher your nightly rate goes, the fewer problems you have with guests. Let me repeat that for the people in the back. wider your filters, the more exposure your listing gets. The more exposure you get, the more reservations you get. As your reservations increase, your occupancy increases, your price goes up. Price Labs will do this for you automatically. When it sees your calendar getting full, it'll raise your prices. I do this on an active basis. Daily I'm checking our percentages, how many reservations we have for each house, what our percentages are for occupancy. And I am raising prices for the properties that have a lot of occupancy. And if you add filters in there, if you say, no, I'm not okay with more than one pet, I'm not okay with cats, I'm not okay with people who are 25 years old, ⁓ then you just hurting your conversion rate. Hurting your conversion rate causes your occupancy to go down. When your occupancy goes down, you have to lower your nightly rate. When you lower your nightly rate, you're going to get problem guests And that is exactly why I don't do this screening. And that's why. I only process like three to five of these claims a month with the number of guests that I'm hosting to only be processing this many claims is incredible. I speak to people all the time who are using, you know, Evolve or Vicasa or whatever. And the guest damage is constant. It's like all the time. they're not allowing pets, they have so many filters that they don't understand the ultimate impact that this has. So ⁓ why ⁓ I so claims? Well, one reason is a lot of them just aren't worth it. It's like $40 to replace that pillow. I'm gonna replace the pillow. I'm not gonna charge the guest for the pillow being stolen. It's only 40 bucks. You know, like the amount of time and effort that you're putting into making a claim for that. Now, if it's like a thousand dollars worth of bedding like yeah, definitely make a claim. I think my threshold it's based on the finances of the reservation. Right? If the guest booked and they had a four dollar pet fee, but there's a hundred dollars of guest damage because maybe there's like, I don't know, dog poop in the yard, ⁓ my cleaner's gonna charge me extra maybe for cleaning up dog poop in the yard. Maybe that's an extra $75. ⁓ I've got an invoice for $75. ⁓ I have a $400 pet fee. I ultimately made $325 because that person had a pet there. Normally I make $400 and there's not feces in the yard, but in this situation, it's worth it. I'm not going to make a claim for this just because there's some sort of issue that has to be resolved. No. I think you need to bring your expectations of guests a little bit lower and not ruin their experience on Airbnb. I think that the platform will reward you for this. I think your reviews will reward you for this. I think your visibility will be rewarded by this. Nonetheless, you can make a claim when you want to, But Julie, you asked me my opinion on this, and that's what I'm giving you. My opinion is to get your night rate as high as you possibly can while maintaining high occupancy. And that is good management. That is what's going to cause your property to less damage and fewer problems. So those that I'm talking about, ⁓ it comes back to the broken window theory, So when you've got property. That is the least expensive in your niche, then I feel like there's a reason for that. If you are the cheapest five bedroom or the cheapest house with a bar, or the cheapest lakefront, or the cheapest three-bedroom, Or the cheapest apartment. There's a reason your guests are booking your property. And it's because they don't care what the condition of the property is. When you have bad reviews, when you've got like a 4.5 star rating, your guests are booking your property because they're planning to disrespect it. They're planning to not take care of it. are your problem guests. Those are the ones who are sneaking pets in and not paying a pet fee. ⁓ Those are the that are going to be smoking in your living room. So You have to fix everything that's an issue. Like the broken window theory says essentially this, if I'm gonna paraphrase it. It's there's a vacant building in the city and people are walking by on the street, if they see one broken window, they feel like they can break more. When something seem like it's being taken care of, not being maintained, people feel like they've got this. ⁓ Right, that they can also disrespect that property. So when they are at your rental and they see like that your cabinet doors off hinge they're broken and they don't fit right and they're like askew, they're gonna feel like they can just throw their bottle caps out into the yard. When they're in the hot tub and they can see like that there's you know trash that wasn't picked up when the tore it apart, ⁓ nobody picked up the trash, they're gonna like they can leave bags outside of the trash can if it's difficult to open the trash can. See, the guest has like subconscious thought process that well, they're not gonna care. So this is acceptable. And not only that, but like ⁓ they're not. Actively going out of their way to cause damage. They're just like any excuse is good enough. Right? So I don't really want to get out of this hot tub and I'm gonna have to walk across gravel in my bare feet to go like use the restroom. So I'm just gonna pee here. Right? Like, why would that be a problem? That's not gonna be a problem for me. But it is. That's the thing, is it's gonna be a problem for the host. It's gonna be a problem for the cleaner. Cause now there's urine in the hot tub and it stinks of bleach because that pool smell that you're used to, like that high school gym pool, like that's because there's urine in the pool. the reaction of chlorine and and urine. Urea, actually. ⁓ the YouTube video on it. It's fascinating. Anyway, back to the point. your guests are given ⁓ permission to disrespect your property. when you don't maintain your property. And to give you a illustration of this, I'm going to tell you ⁓ Gary. Now his name wasn't actually Gary and ⁓ I kind of feel like using his real name, but I'm just gonna move on. So this was a five-bedroom house in Lake Harmony, and this was a party house. It still is a party house. before he bought it, it was falling into disrepair. And he did buy it, and he did a renovation, and COVID boom was amazing for him, and his property earned a lot of money. ⁓ And put in like a really, really, really big hot tub and This awesome setup, However, his renovations were very poorly done. His decor got ⁓ dingy, ⁓ and just worn out over time. Never got replaced. He have like a cohesive theme to his house. So like it kind of made you think of like an old depressed clown when you walked through it. I mean, at least lately. ⁓ Back the beginning, it photographed really well, but Today it just looks like an old depressed clown. The amount of carpet that's in this house, man. ⁓ moving on. So like he had bad renovations. To give you an example, there was stickers of marble on laminate countertops. ⁓ when that first went on, ⁓ looked incredible. It made the photos look really good. ⁓ five years later, those counters are all scratched up and they look terrible. ⁓ And guests are walking into that. Every single time. not only that, but his guests are walking into this and then they're saying, Hey, Gary, ⁓ just want to let you know ⁓ is all scratched, that is stained, there's scuffs on the wall. And they go through a laundry list of all the damage that they noticed when they got there because they don't want to be charged for it. They want to make sure it's on record that this damage existed when they arrived. But ⁓ ⁓ fact means that now they feel like they can do the same. Like that's the standard of okay, that they can just, you know, do whatever they feel like doing at your house now. ⁓ there's not going to be any consequence. There's not going to be any reimbursement requests because you're not going to fix any of it. could keep going on. ⁓ his hot tub had no filter. Like you might say, how do you run a hot tub with no filter? he told me, Pocono Pool, they told me that I don't need this filter, so I've been running it without a filter. Well, you keep on having issues with your hot tub. Your guests keep complaining about the hot tub. ⁓ There's a lot problems going on here. ⁓ And I think should have a filter for your hot tub. Maybe they told you you can run it without a filter. but I think you might be better off getting a filter for it because you can also run it with a filter, right? And this hot tub could fit like 10 people in it. And sometimes you do get 10 people in it. And then later on, when we'd arrive there to clean, like water is just way too low. There's not enough water in the hot tub, so we have to refill it each time. ⁓ Cause he's the kind of guests there that are going to put 10 people into this hot tub. Which means the water overflows the sides and somebody's doing a you know a dive into the center of it and everybody's getting their faces splashed with chlorine pee water. my gosh, so bad. So so bad. He had bad furniture. This guy bed bugs three times in one year. I know because we were discovering it. It was horrible. And it caused a lot of problems for us as the cleaners. And it caused a lot of problems for his guests. They were getting refunds. this is 100% ⁓ because Gary would not do full renovation on his house, get things done with quality contractors that didn't leave like gigantic gaps staring at you in the face. He didn't do anything with quality except for his photographs and his advertising. That guy kept on putting people into this house that would just ruin it, disrespect it, not take care of it. He wasn't able to get his nightly rate high. He was the least expensive five-bedroom in all of Lake Harmony. And it shows Because when you walk through this house, you see old dingy paint, you see scuffs all over the place, you see scratches in the flooring, you see gaps in the flooring. Guys, he had a kitchen renovation done, and the whole counter was just covered with tiles. He had a laminate counter. This contractor just put thin set on laminate counters and then put tiles down on it. Two foot by two foot marble tiles. Expensive material and they put it in here with the worst possible cuts. They did such a terrible job. I actually have a video of this kitchen renovation is gonna help you find Gary. ⁓ I have of this kitchen on my channel on the Galvanized Management YouTube channel. So if you want to see how incredibly bad this kitchen was, our team renovated this kitchen. It was an incredible story, like a twenty thousand dollar renovation. people think like a kitchen's gonna be more than that, especially considering all the stuff that we did there. so you might wanna check that out just for entertainment purposes. ⁓ But like it was just ⁓ bad. So Julie, just don't that owner. Don't be ⁓ Gary. Don't be the one that damage like you experienced. and neglect to fix it and clean it up. And the first step is to replace that that picture, right? The the one with the broken frame. Get a new frame. Make make it similar to the one that's already in the photos. Put it back on the wall. Make sure all those surfaces are cleaned. Deep clean that whole place. from Gary's mistakes. Replace your flooring when it's getting worn out. Paint your walls when there's scuffs. Keep your property in good shape and manage it well. And you'll be surprised that these guests either avoid your property or they temper their behavior When they're there. That's because this is the show where we discuss the challenges no one talks about when they sell the dream of easy passive income. Left unaddressed, they're exactly the problems that will break your operation. If you're a property manager, an owner operator, co-host, or just an aspiring investor, I would love to help. Have you got a question? Please email me at info@galvanizedmanagement.com. Your problem might be the next one that we break down, and chances are you'll help a lot of other hosts in the process too. We win or we lose together. If this episode helped you, great. Share it with another host who's in the trenches. Rate and subscribe too so that we can organically reach more people. That's how we make the industry better. I'd also love to see you follow on TikTok at Galvanized Investments and Facebook and YouTube at Galvanized Management. Until next time, stay steady, keep learning. and keep building something real. This is Short Term Rental Problems and Solutions.