CO-HOSTS UNITE!

Yes! Love a Co-host group! 
 

I handle payments two ways; Airbnb Cohost or I collect the money and pay Owners monthly…both ways make it easy to auto pay the cleaners immediately once the task is complete. I’m using Turno now but will switch to Hospitable when they role it out in March.
 

I know many Managers invoice the Owners but I don’t want to add “collecting “ and chasing money to my list. 
 

I love the Hospitable Owners Statement. Use those! 

​@Jamie Salyer YES thanks for responding! I would love a Co-Host group on here to bounce ideas off of each other. It seems like it is lacking everywhere. 

I completely get that! In the states in which we Co-Host you have to work with or be a brokerage in order to collect payments so that is not an option for us and we and our Owners seem to prefer it as well, but I do understand your point and it is probably easier. From my research with “Airbnb Co-Host Payouts” they calculate the payout after they take out their service fees which is not how we structure our commission. Furthermore, we now markup our cleanings so after Airbnb 15.5% fees are taken out the cleaning fee we still actually have the full cleaning fee we forward onto the cleaners so the Owners are not having to come up with the difference from their booking fee profits. There is not way with “Airbnb Co-Host Payouts” to handle this. And finally, something that I recently discovered when I went down this rabbit hole 🙃 I know if you ever send a Special Offer through Airbnb you have to include your cleaning fee in with your booking fee, so therefore the payout would pay zero cleaning fees and you would get extra commission. With all of this, it didn’t seem like it would actually be on autopilot and room for error was too high for us to pay our bookkeeper the extra work. 

Thanks for getting this going!!

it’s my understanding with Airbnb Co-host that they do not take a host fee out of the cleaning fee. 
For my other accounts, I have increased the cleaning fee to offset the increased hot fee too.

we are rolling out direct booking with Hospitable this week. So exciting!

anyone have any tips?

two questions:

• Does anyone love a template email system that is user friendly? With the roll out of direct booking I’ll be emailing my contacts. Now plan to use Go Daddy but would love input.
• has anyone come up with a creative and efficient way to collect Airbnb emails? StayFi seems great but it’s an investment 

​@Jamie Salyer When I spoke to Airbnb a few days ago (I know the support can be unreliable) they told me this example:

AIRBNB CO-HOST PAYOUT: If you choose Commission plus cleaning fee option 

1. Commission would be based off TOTAL BOOKING (booking, pet fees, extra guest fees, and all other fees except cleaning fee) MINUS 15.5% service fee on ALL FEES INCLUDING CLEANING FEES.
2. Cleaning would be paid in full - however note the Owner still gets 15.5% reduction so technically if you do not mark up your cleaning fee the Owner will be paying the difference out of their payout. 

OH! Ok, that’s super interesting and good to know. Our cleaning fees are already so high ($300-$350) so I’ll have to think about this. 
thank you! 

I just started using stayfi, so far pretty happy.

​@danielleshaw Great questions, and it’s clear you’ve given this considerable thought and want to decide what’s best for your business.

The deposit you require I actually think is very smart. To your point, the outflow of cleaning fees for 7 new properties for that initial month would be a hit to cash flow.

I agree with you that it’s operationally messy to accept commissions and cleaning fees per reservation; that’s fine for Airbnb cohost payouts, but what about Vrbo, direct, BDC?

Are you asking $1500 per property for this new owner with 7 properties?
 

If so, think of it from their angle...they’re encountering the same issue as you now: a BIG outflow of cash that they’d like to keep on hand for capital expenses, improvements, bills, etc.

In these scenarios, having options for them that also create win/wins and a compromise is helpful. I’m assuming 7 new properties is nothing to scoff at for your management business, and you don’t want to lose that.

Here are a few things to consider:
-Collect the deposit fee over a period of months as an expense...you can easily add this per statement as an expense with Owner Statements
-Charge a lower but non-refundable onboarding fee. Instead of the larger $1500 refundable deposit, you might also present say a $500-750 onboarding fee that’s non-refundable.

-Collect a “retainer fee” from the owner. Many managers/cohosts have a monthly retainer fee, even if there are no bookings. This helps cover overhead costs while at the same giving you a buffer. Can’t be too high or it won’t make sense for them.

-Perhaps the most frictionless option is to charge a “management fee” to the guest that gets rolled into the nightly rate, but you collect 100% of this. This would again help cover overhead and initial cleaning fee cash outlay.

-You could do a combination of any of these to basically reach that desired $1500 amount and help solve the cashflow issue.

Just my two cents, let me know if helpful!

Hey Jamie, we use HappyGuest as a way to get our rental agreements signed, a decent “guidebook”, collecting emails, upsells and damage protection. Downside is you only get the booker, but for most of my properties, they are not large enough to justify StayFi. In my opinion, I would use a product like StayFi when I would have multiple families staying in one property. 

This is how I do it, I either get paid from Airbnb (who remits payment 24 hours after checkin) or from the collection and holding of the revenue. I have never invoiced an owner entirely for payment. We invoice for miscellaneous costs that we haven’t collected. 

New Host here! My goal (Down the road, once i get the hang of things well) is to become a co host for others ontop of hosting our STR. Any beginner tips? How to start? Etc?

Hi there, 

Grateful for this community thread!  I am new to co-hosting and do not have any experience yet and it seems almost impossible to find hosts that are willing to accept you if you’re brand new.  I have been in the mortage industry for 10 plus year but looking to expand my professional development to doing this.  Can someone please give me some tips on how to start as I am getting a ton of no’s. 

Thank you! 

Tabby