All around the world, large short term rental property managers are having a really, really difficult time.

In fact, a lot of them are going out of business.

There’s several reasons why, and I want to talk about one of those this week, which has to do with maintenance.

Why a large property manager like FICASA cannot handle your maintenance properly, which is why they have awful, awful review scores.

And so I want to break that down today.

I want to prove why they are not able to maintain your property.

I want to talk about exactly what that means, what the bottlenecks are, where they’re happening, what that means for your review scores, and ultimately, what that means for your bottom line, properties with less and lower reviews, earn less.

That is a fact.

And lastly, we’ll talk about some of the options you have to turn things around and get off that sinking ship.

Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches.

We’ll discuss investing in real estate, but with a specific focus on short term rentals.

Quick, actionable items to acquire, manage, and scale your portfolio.

I’m your host, Tim Hubbard.

There’s three main reasons why a large short terminal property manager fails at their job, which means they are failing you, which means your property is making less money than it should, and your guests are not having very great experiences.

And the three reasons are maintenance, housekeeping, and communication.

It really comes down to those three things.

So we’re jumping into maintenance today, and I want to start off with some proof.

There is proof out there.

It’s easy to find that these large property managers cannot handle your maintenance.

And that proof is easy to find in average review scores.

So I went ahead and just pulled up some large vacation rental markets in the US, like Destin, for example, Destin, Florida.

And I pulled some averages.

I used AirDNA for this, so anyone can do this.

And it shows us the top property managers in these markets.

So I’m just reading off my notes here.

Vacasa has 1,583 listings in Destin, Florida at the time of this recording, with an average review score of, wait for it, 4.5.

That is not good.

We know the properties with a review score that low are not showing up high on the search results.

And another sort of crappy thing happens when your property has bad reviews, and that is it changes the expectations.

So if a guest is booking your property, maybe it was the only one left, or maybe it’s really high demand, and they’re going through these other reviews and they’re reading them.

Well, if they don’t have a perfect experience, they’re going to be more inclined, or they’re going to hold back less, I guess I could say, on leaving you a bad review.

If a bunch of people have already left four or three star reviews and they don’t have a very great experience, well, then leaving a four star review isn’t going to take a lot of energy from them.

Right.

It’s something a lot of people have already done.

So, Vacasa, Destin, Florida right now, 4.5.

Real Joy Vacations, 4.49.

Red Awning, another massive, massive company, 4.5.

Southern Vacation Rentals, 4.4.

These are not great scores, ladies and gentlemen.

These are very bad, and that means that you are losing a lot of money.

Let’s pull up another one here, Phoenix.

Vacasa, they have 932 properties in Phoenix, 4.62 review.

Not great.

Still definitely not great, a little better than Destin.

Cozy Sweets, I hope you’re not in Phoenix and you’re working with Cozy Sweets because their average review score is 4.06.

Now, just stay tuned for a second.

I’ve actually copied a whole bunch of these reviews and plugged them in to our Chat GPT review analyzer, and we’re gonna pull out the reasons why these properties are getting these low, low reviews.

Let’s look at a couple other ones here real quickly.

Gulf Shores, Vacasa has 2,559 properties in Gulf Shores.

That’s quite a lot.

And if you are working with them, well, my heart goes out to you because your property may have a 4.43 average review score.

That is the average among all 2,559 properties for Vacasa in the Gulf Shores.

The second largest property manager there has almost 2,000.

So, 1,948.

That’s Bright Robins Property Management.

And they have a review score of 4.46.

So, I mentioned you’re kind of on a sinking ship if you happen to be working with one of these property managers.

And I’m sorry, but that is just the reality.

Because these property managers own your account, right?

That means that in order to improve your review scores, well, you have to earn a lot of 5-star reviews.

We know how many it takes to go from a 4-star average to a 5-star average.

It’s a lot.

So, the alternative there is essentially just starting over.

Okay, and one more popular vacation rental destination, just to prove that I’m not just pulling these numbers out of the air.

Let’s look at Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Very, very popular.

So, Smokey Mountains, those areas.

Vacasa, 705 properties in this area.

Wait for it, 4.42 average review score.

I don’t even know what to say.

That’s just really, really bad.

If our team has a property that for whatever reason got drugged down to such an awful review score, well, then we’re gonna delete that property.

We’re gonna create a new listing, and we’re going to start over, unless Airbnb has already kicked us off the platform, right?

Luckily, our team does a really good job, and we don’t run into that situation.

But the sad thing is, if you’re working with a company like Vakasa, well, they’re not gonna do this for you, right?

They’re not gonna delete your listing and start over.

So among these four destinations we just talked about, Vakasa is managing almost 6,000 listings with an average review score from 4.42 to 4.62.

That is really, really bad.

And now all of the other large property managers in these same destinations have similar scores.

Okay, so that’s proof that these managers are not doing a great job, right?

And we know the better your reviews are, and the more you have of them, the more your property makes.

So there’s three main reasons why these managers are just dropping the ball.

And one of those which we’re talking about today is maintenance.

Stay tuned, because we’ll definitely be talking about housekeeping and communication in the near future.

Okay, so we know the reviews are bad, but why exactly are they bad?

Well, to do a little bit of an analysis, our teams created a Chat GPT prompt, which is quite in-depth.

It’s part of our Chat GPT prompts.

I mean, there’s dozens of pages here.

And these are things that we use to manage the tens of thousands of guests that we’ve managed with super host status on all of our accounts, and we’re doing a really good job.

So I’m gonna go ahead and find our review analysis template.

I’ve got it right here.

I’m simply just gonna copy it, and then I’m gonna paste it into Chat GPT.

Or as a pro tip, depending on which version of Chat GPT you’re using, you can actually create a custom GPT.

You could just paste our prompt in there, and then any time you wanna analyze your reviews, you just copy them and paste them right in.

You don’t have to prompt anything.

So that’s what I’ve done here.

I went and grabbed some of Acosta’s listings, just a couple random ones here, and I hope this is not your listing if you’re watching.

It doesn’t have the best reviews, which we’ve seen among their averages.

So this one actually has a 4.17.

And I copied reviews all the way back to 2022, which is quite a while, so we’ve got a lot of data here.

And I just pasted it right in here.

Please analyze the fallen reviews.

Of course, it has that prompt in there that we’ve already created.

So if I scroll down, and this prompt does a lot of cool things, actually.

It’s going to tell us the things that they loved.

It’s going to tell us their favorite guests’ local attractions.

The top negative comments and issues is what we’re looking for.

So number one, outdated furniture and kitchen essentials.

Kitchen essentials are always high on that list.

This prompt is going to tell you how many times these reviews got mentioned, and also what their dates are.

So hopefully if you’re out there and you’re managing your property yourself, you got a much better eye on it, right?

But if you’re working one of these large property managers, I guarantee they’re not doing this.

The second most common review complaint was maintenance.

House needs general maintenance.

Issues included a rotting door, minor upkeep concerns, and just general repairs.

And this is over the span of several dates.

So I’m not making this up, right?

This is reviewing dozens and dozens of reviews from just a random property that I pulled off, Fecasa.

Now let’s scroll down a little bit.

I went and grabbed another one, and I pasted it in here.

So a whole bunch of reviews.

I’m just going to scroll down to the bottom, and we can see the things that the guests loved.

We can see the top attractions they mentioned.

And then when we get down to the negative comment assessment, what is number one on the list?

I’ll tell you what it is.

Maintenance and upkeep issues.

Six people mentioned it on this particular property, and this included things like bold on the ceilings, peeling paint, flickering lights.

And this again is over the span of a long period of time.

We’ve analyzed a few markets around the US.

We’ve pulled out several markets, common vacation rental markets across the US with thousands of listings.

We’ve looked at their average review scores, which are not good.

We analyzed some random properties using our ChatGPT prompt, which you can find, by the way, at strriches.com.

You can get all of our downloads there.

That helped us uncover one of the main reasons that these properties are not getting good reviews.

And that was because of maintenance.

So with the proof out of the way, why can these property managers not manage maintenance properly?

Well, the first thing is they don’t actually have maintenance teams in these areas.

So imagine a company with 40,000 listings, but dropping every month, trying to set up maintenance operations across the US.

It’s really, really challenging.

And don’t just take my word for it.

We interviewed the host of HostAway a couple weeks ago, Marcus.

They just raised over half a billion dollars.

And this is one of his specific comments as well.

But now what we’re seeing is that those big consolidation plays didn’t work out.

And the reason why they didn’t work is very simple.

To be successful in managing all the moving parts of this property manager, you need local connections.

So these really large property managers that have scaled quickly, they don’t have maintenance under control, they don’t have their own in-house maintenance staff, which means they are left with the same options, yes, as you.

So if you are managing your property by yourself, you would be calling the same people that these large property managers are often calling.

They like to call them their preferred vendors, but I guarantee you a lot of them would not be your preferred choice.

Let’s look at a short-term rental property management company that has in-house maintenance staff.

I don’t want to say that all property managers are bad.

There’s certainly a lot of good ones out there.

But in general, the larger the property management company, the worse service they’re going to provide for your property, which means your property is going to make less money.

So let’s assume that they actually have their own in-house maintenance staff.

Well, what happens when you’re at the peak of the season?

And not just that company’s properties, but every other person in that area has maintenance challenges.

Well, the maintenance people are bottlenecked.

They have too much work, right?

They can’t possibly do it all, which means that if you’re managing your property by yourself, or if you’re currently working with one of these large property managers, there’s not a huge difference there, right?

You’re going to be in the same situation as they would be.

The sad thing is that you’re probably paying them like 20% or more of your revenue, and they very likely could be earning more money than you do.

Another potential downside to working with one of these really large property managers that have thousands of properties in one market is that when they get bottlenecked, when they can’t handle all the maintenance, their preferred vendors can’t handle it, they’re probably going to be picking and choosing between the properties that get service and the properties that don’t.

If they have a property that rents for $5,000 a night and your property only rents for $150 a night, if they were to wait and fix that $5,000 a night property after yours, well, they’re losing a lot of money and so is that property owner.

And so all that to say that yes, they’re very likely prioritizing the properties they have in that market when they’re bottlenecked with maintenance.

So we talked about some of the specific examples here, why these property managers have a really hard time maintaining your property, because they’re working with preferred vendors, they don’t have enough vendors in the area, or they’re waiting to use ones that are already on their list instead of reaching out to vendors outside of their preferred network, which you would absolutely do if you were managing the property yourself.

They have the same challenges that everyone has when it comes to a high season, right?

If we take just a quick step back and we think about these preferred vendors, well, if your preferred vendor working for Vecasa and you know there’s a thousand properties in the market and Vecasa is going to continue to pay you, well, then you’re probably not as concerned with what you want to charge Vecasa as you would be, right?

With an individual owner.

And it’s not just that, unfortunately, working with a really large property manager, they also charge you on top of the maintenance fee.

And I’m speaking from personal experience.

I have lots of long term rentals where this happens.

I have property managers in the long term rental space that I’ve just said, you know what?

Don’t send any of your maintenance people ever again.

We don’t trust you.

The work is really bad and it’s costing way more.

And so our team does it ourselves.

If we take these preferred vendors one step further, we know that they’re pretty much charging whatever they regularly charge, whatever they think they might be able to get away with.

Now, if you’re out there and you’re one of these preferred vendors, I’m not saying that 100% are bad, right?

I’m just saying in general, the proof is in the pudding.

The reviews are really bad and a lot of them, a lot of the reviews, talk specifically about maintenance.

So if a large property manager already knows who they’re going to for the work, it means they’re not getting multiple bids, right?

And now that might not be a big deal if they’re fixing a broken door knob or changing a light bulb.

But what if they’re changing the AC system or what if they’re changing a water heater?

What if they’re changing a large component on the property where it really will make a big difference?

If you’ve been tuning in for a while, well, then you know we’ve talked about a lot of these things.

Way back in episode 42, I talked about getting multiple roof bids.

And yeah, I saved over $20,000 just making a few calls and scheduling a couple appointments.

And I’ll tell you what, years later, that roof is still on the building and there are still no leaks.

So the bigger the maintenance item is, the more you need to shop around and make sure that you’re getting a competitive price.

And again, if you’re working with one of these really large property managers, they’re going to their preferred partner, and then they’re charging you on top of what the preferred partner charges.

Now, unfortunately, it’s not just the price that becomes a bit of an issue when we’re talking about maintenance items, especially large maintenance items.

I have one property down in Brazil that I was using a professional property manager for for a couple years.

And I know from firsthand experience that when there was a large maintenance issue, I was definitely involved.

I had to provide information.

I was going back and forth with messaging.

I was contacting the building association.

So even though you’re working with a large property manager, you can very often find yourself handling some of these issues.

The only reason I wasn’t managing that property myself, that short term rental property myself with our team is because most of the guests were Portuguese speakers.

We didn’t have a lot of Portuguese speakers on our team.

And so I tested out a property manager.

So I’m happy to say our team now does a fantastic job managing that property, as well as all the properties in over 20 cities in eight countries where we’re currently working with other partners.

We would love to work with you.

If you’re looking for a new manager, you’re looking for some help.

Our team are experts.

If you’re new to the show, you know that our team was built off my personal portfolio that I’ve built over the last decade.

Dozens of properties.

We got big and we got great.

And now we have great results.

You can head to strriches.com.

There’s a little property management button there.

We’d be happy to chat with you, see if your property makes a good fit with our team.

So lastly, when it comes to lost revenue, we know that when we have a maintenance issue, very often we have to block our calendar, right?

That is not seen lightly on these algorithms.

If you block your calendar continuously, or if it’s blocked for a long period of time, well, that’s not great for your visibility on Airbnb or VRBO or booking.com or wherever you happen to be.

And it’s certainly not great for you if you happen to block that property right in the peak of the high season, right?

Okay, let’s recap just a little bit.

So we know that these nationwide managers are not doing a great job.

We know that the reviews are not great.

We’ve seen those.

We know why they can’t do a great job.

We’ve talked about the money that you’re potentially losing or you’re very likely losing if you’re working with one of these managers.

So what’s the solution?

What can we do, right?

Well, I think the first question is just to ask yourself, how often do these maintenance issues happen?

You know, of course, the older your property is and the less renovations you’ve done into it over the years, the more maintenance you’re going to have.

I know I have some properties from the 1800s that had been renovated, and so there’s not too much maintenance issue there.

But some of the other properties that I haven’t done a complete renovation on, there’s a lot of maintenance.

You got to ask yourself that first.

How often am I actually having these maintenance issues?

If it’s not very often, like the majority of properties out there, well, then you definitely want to ask yourself if it’s worth actually working with one of these property managers.

Remember, we’re just talking about one of the three reasons why these review scores are so bad.

We’re going to get into housekeeping, we’re going to get into communication in a future episode.

So that’s the first piece.

How often are these issues actually happening?

And then you got to ask yourself, if something pops up, how hard is it to actually fix this maintenance issue?

What’s the answer?

Not hard.

It’s not that hard to get on the phone, to call an HVAC technician.

You very likely already have a remote lock, right?

Where you can let someone in your property.

Hopefully, you have a camera there where you can monitor someone coming and going.

But very often, these are not hard things to fix, but they are important, right?

And so if they’re not getting fixed quickly, it’s a bad guest experience and it leads to that bad review.

The next thing we need to ask ourselves is, are we being proactive with our property maintenance?

Are we regularly maintaining our air conditioning and heating?

Are we doing checks a couple times a year?

Or are we paying our housekeeper, someone there locally, to do an extra check, to do an extra inspection?

Hopefully, we are, and hopefully, we’re keeping these things maintained so that we can fix them before they actually break.

So if we’re being proactive in regards to maintenance with our property, then we shouldn’t have a lot of issues popping up, right?

But when they do pop up, they’re usually not hard to fix.

And how do we fix them?

Well, we just simply make a couple phone calls.

Remember, this is the same thing that your property manager is doing.

They’re calling, very likely, some of the same people that you would call if you jumped on Google or you jumped on Chat GPT and searched for HVAC technician, or if you’ve used some of our past recommendations, like using thumbtack.com or Nextdoor, for example, where you can actually see reviews of service professionals in your area.

To wrap things up here, we know that maintenance is really, really important.

And we also know that these large property managers are not doing a good job at it.

And that’s why they are losing literally thousands of properties a month.

The bad news for you if you’re working with one of them right now is that you don’t really have a good way out, right?

They own your property listing, which means that in order to come out of this sinking ship, you’re going to have to start over.

You have to make a change.

You decide to end that relationship, well, then you have the opportunity to make a lot more money with your property.

And the reality is, if you’re taking care of the property, if you’re being proactive and doing some routine service, then you’re not going to have that many big maintenance issues.

And when you do, there’s lots of resources to reach out, a few phone calls, you can find someone, and you’re probably going to be calling some of the same people that your manager would have been called, but it’s going to cost you a lot less.

I hope that gave you a little bit more insight.

And if you decide to make that change, I hope that you do.

And I hope that you find all of our resources that we have available at strriches.com to help you through that transition.

We have our ebook, our management ebook, that talks about a lot of things that our team does.

We have episodes on how to work with contractors, where to find them.

I mean, you name it, we’ve talked about a lot of things over the last five years.

Until next time, I hope you have a fabulous week.

Whether you’re just getting started or you have dozens of properties, one thing remains the same.

Poor management can crush your investment returns.

Our team has learned a lot managing over 40,000 guests, and we’ve compiled our biggest takeaways into a handy guidebook to help you better manage your property.

Equipped with checklists for guest verification to pricing strategies, it breaks down our whole process from start to finish.

Best of all, it’s free for you for being one of our loyal subscribers.

You can get your copy by going to strriches.com.

That’s strriches.com, and I hope it helps you earn higher returns with less headache.