What do top STR hosts have in common? Aside from a beautiful property and good reviews? They have excellent house rules.

if you’re struggling with difficult guests or even property damage at your property, it could be the result of unclear house rules or a rental agreement. And so this week I wanna break down one by one what our teams use to manage. Tens of thousands of guests, we’re gonna set really clear expectations.

This is gonna help improve the guest experience, but it’s gonna also help you protect your properties and have a better experience from the hosting side.

Times have changed and so have our house rules. It’s actually been over five years since we did an episode on House Rules, and so it’s about time to give you all the updates. Stay tuned.

Well, welcome back to the Short-Term Rental Riches podcast. Times have changed and so have our house rules. It’s actually been over five years since we did an episode on House Rules, and so it’s about time to give you all the updates. Today’s show’s pretty straightforward. Gonna go through all 21 of our Essential House rules. We’re gonna break down why you need them and what to say. And of course we’re gonna give you our copy of our house rules so you can edit these however way you want to adapt them to your property.

Our first rule simply states that there’s a mandatory rental agreement. Ours says, upon booking, you’ll receive a rental agreement slash check-in form that you’re required to sign and return before your arrival.

Now, we only require this outside of Airbnb unless the Airbnb reservation is 30 days or more. If it’s a reservation within Airbnb, then we’re going to have this labeled as their house rule. So it’s the same thing, just formatted a little bit differently.

But this is the legally binding contract between your property and that guest. This sets all of the right expectations.

If something were to happen, and let’s say you had to involve law enforcement, well, they’re going to look or require a legally binding rental agreement.

The second house rule has to do with age and where that person is from. Ours says, if you are a local and or under the age of 23, please notify us before making your reservation. Now we know that Airbnb doesn’t have. Age limits on their booking platform, but VRBO does and some of the other booking platforms do.

We also know that we can’t actually discriminate against where someone’s from. And so if they are a local, they aren’t actually required to tell us that, but most of them do. And it allows us just to ask a follow up question, really simple that says what brings you. To our property or what, you know, what are your plans?

We just wanna make sure that they’re not doing something there they wouldn’t want to do at their own property in the same area.

Our third rule has to do with damage deposits, and at Reeds we’ll place a small deposit hold on your credit card two days before your arrival to cover any accidental property damage that may occur, and it will be released after your checkout. If we fail to capture your security deposit, your reservation will automatically be canceled, and there are a lot of people that push back.

On security deposits. Of course, this depends a lot based on the type of property you have, how big it is, how far in advance they’re booking. The guest profile determines a lot of how essential some of these rules are.

Now, again, we don’t necessarily use this for Airbnb. We use it primarily for other sites that don’t have that protection like booking.com Or maybe you’re taking a direct booking, but the idea is that your rental agreement, your house rules cover you in any and every situation that could possibly come up.

 For a lot of you that are using damage waivers instead of a deposit that’s also highly recommended, you just wanna make sure that you have a little note in your rental agreement that says you will be charging a fee for this damage waiver.

Our fourth rule has to do with direct bookings and it reads. We would like to inform you that for direct bookings, a 4% credit card fee will be applied to any cancellations and refunds. And we will follow the platform’s cancellation policy. Why do we have this in place? Well, let’s say you take a direct booking for a thousand dollars and you’re using Stripe to take that payment, to charge that credit card.

Well, Stripe’s gonna charge you 3% plus a little fee, which means you’re gonna pay 30 something dollars for this processing fee. Now, if that guest cancels. Then that means you’re out that 30 or $40 unless you withhold that money. 

We learned that one over the years, and that’s why it’s in our rental agreement. Number four says, guests acknowledge that they will keep their noise level to a minimum after 10:00 PM Please be respectful to neighbors.

So of course, all of these rules you can modify however you want. If you have a beautiful, large luxury mansion out on a 30 acre estate, then you probably don’t need to warn your guests about noise because there’s no one that can hear them.

Number five has to do with noise. It says, guests acknowledge that they’ll keep their noise level to a minimum after 10:00 PM Please be respectful of neighbors. Of course, you want to edit, modify these rules so that they fit your property best. If you have a luxury estate on a 50 acre chunk of land where no one’s going to be able to hear anyone.

Then you probably don’t need this rule, and that’s probably why lots of people are going to enjoy staying out at your property. So again, just keep in mind, these things need to be edited based on your properties.

Number six has to do with parties. So our default is just to say no parties allowed, but we know we have a lot of properties we work with and there’s a lot of beautiful properties out there and that do allow events or parties. So we have a special note here, and this is just for you host.

If small events are allowed, we welcome small, calm gatherings such as baby showers, family birthdays, or similar events. However, all events must be pre-approved in advance. 

Guests are responsible for ensuring all attendees respect, house rules, and neighborhood quiet hours. Unapproved events may result in cancellation of the reservation.

Number seven has to do with cleanliness and reporting. If a property is not clean, what I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna give you the highlights for each of these rules. You can grab our exact template with all the rules exactly as we’ve written them just by grabbing it in the link below in the show notes.

Or you can always go to st riches.com where you can find all of our past episodes. We do have a lot of really valuable eBooks on there that you can grab for free. We hope that you find the content valuable. We have spent a lot of time preparing it for you. If you don’t mind, if you haven’t already, if you wouldn’t mind.

Leaving us a review on Apple or Spotify or consider subscribing to the channel if you aren’t already. It really goes a long way and we’d greatly appreciate it.

So number seven says guests need to report any cleanliness issues within the first two hours of arriving at the property. That way the end of the reservation doesn’t roll around and they say, yeah, the property was never clean. We’re expecting a refund That allows our team to go to the property to check it out and to fix whatever was wrong.

Number eight is our smoking policy. And so this is a strict ban on all forms of smoke, not just cigarettes, but also marijuana. Even if marijuana is legal in the state, it doesn’t mean people have the legal right to smoke within your property. And this also includes a big one, which is very common these days, which is all those vape pens.

And actually we goes as far to exclude any sort of open flames, which includes candles. And we do have a fine per day if there is evidence of smoke in the property. There are a few devices you can put in your property these days to actually monitor smoke. One would be minute, another one would be noise aware.

Our current fee is $200 a day if we find cigarette butts or ashes or anything like that. And of course we can prove that based off photos.

Number nine has to do with occupancy. So a lot of challenge reservations have to do with a few people making a reservation and a lot of people showing up. So we want to make sure that it’s very clear in our house rules that only the people on the reservation are allowed at the property. No unregistered guests are allowed without prior approval, of course.

and again, this is gonna depend on your property, your guest profile, and we could also word these things in a way that doesn’t sound so harsh. I’m just giving you the nitty gritty details today.

Number 10 has to do with late checkouts, so we know that this is going to come up at one time or another. It’s very, very common and it could end up costing you money if you have a housekeeper that shows up. Whether she’s paid by the hour or paid by the job, it’s going to take them more time if they can’t get in there and clean.

It’s also not a good experience having housekeepers wait around for guests. So we wanna be really clear upfront, and

If someone stayed late at your property, well, you need a fee in your house rules that you can charge them for unauthorized late checkouts. Of course, there are many situations where you wanna offer a late checkout, and that goes a long way to help with the guest experience and with the reviews.

So the next three have to do with midterm stays, and the first one says if you’re staying over 30 days or whatever constitutes a long-term tenant in your state, this changes by state could be as low as 28 days that they sign a lease agreement.

This is really, really important You also want to have with this rule that they need to do a background check. so these initial rules allow you to require that lease agreement. If you did not have this there and someone booked for 35 nights, well, maybe they complete your house rules, and then you send over a lease, but they don’t actually sign it and you can’t actually enforce that if it’s not in your rental agreement.

The next rule we have number 12, and this is an optional one. This is a midterm state cleaning, so if you have guests staying over 30 days, we like to verify that things aren’t going crazy in the property around day 15, and so we will cover a cleaning where our housekeeper goes in. We schedule with the guest, of course, but allows them to clean up the property a little bit, but also make sure that there’s nothing fishy going on.

If you do do that midterm, stay clean. Well, our 13th rule. Allows you to actually charge for it if you wanted to. It has a small note that says your midterm clean will be taken from your deposit. Or if this was a reservation from Airbnb, that’ll be processed through a resolution.

Number 14 has to do with pets and the amount of pets that you allow at your property. Could be two dogs, it could be two cats, could be whatever you want. You could have a weight limit. You get to decide what your pet policy is. You also get to decide if you want to charge for it.

 You may decide to not welcome aggressive breeds, for example, if you’re allowing dogs, but you don’t wanna allow every type of dog.

that one’s up to you. And again, you can get our exact verbiage and our template. It’s in the link down below. Number 15 has to do with excessive cleaning fees. So if your housekeepers show up at the property and it’s not in great shape, well, you have some sort of rule, some sort of expectation in advance that says, Hey, we’re going to charge you again, or we’re gonna charge you X amount.

If these conditions are.

You can also have in there that you’re gonna use photos to document any sort of excessive dirtiness. And again, all of these rules are just in place to set the right expectations and to encourage your guests to treat the property the way you’re expecting them to treat it.

number 16 has to do with exterior security cameras highly, highly recommended, so you can get an idea of what’s going on at your property if something’s not right. Of course, this isn’t gonna face anywhere inside the property, but we’ll face from the entry door. Looking out. You could see if someone’s showing up with a bunch of dogs, if they’re showing up with too many guests.

I talked to someone recently. That literally said someone showed up with a whole bunch of bunnies and there was a whole bunch of hay in their property, so you can’t make this stuff up. People are living in short-term rentals now, and there’s all types of different gas profiles. So again, these rules are to help set the right expectations.

Number 17 is a rule design just for long-term stays. Basically says that we have a separate cancellation policy if your reservation was 30 days or longer. Now, Airbnb has their own long-term policies, but again, this rental agreement you’ll want to use for all the different channels and not all of the channels have a specific long-term rental policy.

 Rule number 18 has to do with no shows. So of course we have these cancellation policies in place, but sometimes people’s plans get disrupted. They miss their flight, whatever it happens to be. And even though we have a cancellation policy in place, they still want and try to get a refund. 18 secures our side of things.

We’re not able to rent the property again.

So if someone doesn’t show up, they will not be given any credits. They’ll be not. So if someone doesn’t show up, they won’t be given any credits. They won’t get a refund.

All right. Number 19 has to do with items that guests leave behind your property. This will happen without a doubt. Our rule says, remember to take all your belongings upon checkout. Any items left behind will incur a $50 mail-in fee. Separate from the cost of postage, we’ll do our best to send your items back to you within a week.

So you wanna set some expectations. Of course, this could change on where your property’s located and a number of different factors. Next one up. If by not following any of our rules forces us to refund or discount an upcoming or an existing guest, you’ll be liable for the costs. So this is basically holding.

An existing guest responsible for any financial losses we have for a future guest if they check out way too late, Okay. And last up, number 21 says, if you were a previous or a current guest that did not or is not respecting our house rules at our property, we have the right to decline your next reservation. So again, this is setting expectations. Someone might have a really great time at your property and want to book it again, even though they were breaking a lot of rules, they were making a lot of noise or smoking at your property, and so you of course want to reserve that property for people that are gonna follow your rules.

I hope this gave you a little bit more insight, and I know we covered a lot here. We have all these rules laid out for you. You can grab our template again down in the show notes or by going to str riches.com. These are not rules that you’re gonna need to use all the time, but rules are in place for when those occasions do arise and when they do arise, you’re gonna be happy that you thought about it beforehand.

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