Welcome back to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast.

I know there’s a lot of you out there that are working with a traditional property manager because you want them to take care of your housekeeping.

And I know that sounds like a big relief, but the reality is a lot of these property managers are not doing a good job.

If you missed our last episode, we broke down almost 6,000 different properties, not one by one, but we looked at the averages across five different rental markets.

And we saw that the average review score for these larger property managers, like Vekasa, for example, was between 4.02 and 4.62.

That is really bad.

And if you have those types of review scores, that means that you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.

We talked about how maintenance was affecting those review scores.

But another really large component of that is housekeeping.

And so this week, we’re going to break down why working with one of these large property managers and using their housekeeping is actually really hurting you.

We’re going to jump into the benefits of hiring your own.

And there are a lot.

Stay tuned.

Let’s jump right in.

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.

We recently broke down thousands of different properties among some of the nation’s largest property managers, and we found that the review scores were really bad.

We looked at markets like Phoenix, and Gulf Shores, and Gatlinburg, and we can see time and time again that these reviews are bad because these large property managers are not doing a good job of cleaning the property.

And so there’s some specific reasons.

Let’s go ahead and just jump into it.

One of them is that they’re working with large companies.

And now not to say that these large housekeeping companies are always bad.

We work with a few that do a really good job, but there are some limitations.

One of the biggest challenges with working with a larger housekeeping company is that you’re very likely going to have different housekeepers showing up to clean your property week in and week out.

And so what does this mean?

This means they’re not that familiar with your property.

And so if a lamp goes missing, or there is a stain on the couch, or if there’s a watermark on your coffee table, if this is the first time your housekeeper has been in your property, then they don’t know if that was already there.

So that’s one of the biggest issues.

It’s just new to your housekeepers.

They’re not familiar with your property.

And because they’re not necessarily going to be cleaning your property on a regular basis, they also don’t have a sense of ownership.

When they’re cleaning your property regularly, they start to feel a sense of ownership.

And this is exactly what we want, right?

We’re partnered with our housekeepers to make sure that they do a really good job cleaning our properties so that we can continue to have guests, we can continue to have work for them, and the circle just continues creating really good guest experiences.

Another thing you might find is that your professional housekeeping company, if they’re working with a really big team, might not guarantee that they’re going to be able to clean your property on the same day.

We recently had a partner join us.

He’s over in Scottsdale area, and we were reviewing his housekeeping contract, which explicitly said they could not guarantee same day turnaround.

And now, this wasn’t the first time we’ve seen this.

We see this with a lot of professional housekeeping companies, where they require a buffer.

They require 24 hours, for example.

And if you have 24 hours between all of your reservations, well, that really limits your calendar.

We know that these OTAs do not like when we’re blocking our calendar, and so it’s not good for your pocketbook, right?

It really hurts your revenue.

It’s not good for the search algorithms, because you’re showing up as a blocked property frequently.

And it’s also not good for your actual property, because if a housekeeper shows up a day late, and maybe someone did cause a little bit of damage, or maybe there was an issue with the property, well, then we’re getting to that late, and then the whole process of reaching out to the guests, reaching out to support becomes delayed.

There’s also the possibility that the guests could say, hey, I checked out on Friday.

You guys cleaned my property on Saturday.

I don’t know what happened in between that time.

So not to say that this happens a lot, but the reality is we wanna always keep our schedule open.

Part of the reason these housekeeping companies have this in their contract is that, let’s just say they’re managing 100 vacation rentals, and what are the busiest checkout days?

Well, those are almost always Sunday and Monday.

And so if they’re managing 100 different vacation rental properties, and maybe they have 50 housekeepers, well, that means they have to get to all these different properties in the same day, and it’s just not physically possible sometimes.

And so they have these terms in their agreement to help protect them in the case that they can’t show up.

Now, of course, having that buffer in there is better than a guest turning up and seeing a dirty unit, right, that hasn’t been turned over.

But ideally, you’re working with your own housekeeper, you have a personal relationship with them, and they have their own backups in case they’re unable to make it.

Now, I’m speaking from personal experience here.

So, if you’ve been following along to the show for a while, then you know that I’ve been building my portfolio for the last decade, and I’ve worked with a lot of housekeepers.

I’ve also worked with some housekeeping companies, and I know those personal relationships that I have are almost always more accommodating.

And if they’re not able to show up on a Sunday, they actually have their own backups, right?

That’s one of the other great things about it.

Maybe it’s their sister, maybe it’s their brother, and they’ve helped train them for the rare occasion where they can’t actually make it to your property.

So, it’s staying within your circle.

It’s made things a lot easier.

And again, it kind of goes back to that sense of ownership, right?

We’re talking individual housekeeper that you’ve contracted with versus a housekeeping company.

Now, let’s talk about the actual costs or potential money that you’re leaving on the table here, right?

We’ve already talked about reviews.

We know that the lower your review score is, the less money your property is going to make.

But a lot of times, these property managers are charging quite a lot for the housekeeping fee, but then they also market up themselves, right?

So, let’s just say the housekeeping fee was $200.

Maybe they charge you $240, and they use this as a profit center, right?

It’s one other area where they’re trying to earn more money.

Now, if you were to take this property over on your own, one of the other side benefits to hiring your own housekeeper is that oftentimes, they’ll help you out with some other tasks.

Maybe they know a handyman.

Maybe they know a maintenance person.

Maybe they’re open to helping you with guest communication or check-in or any of those sorts of things.

You have the ability to work that out if you’ve worked up a direct relationship, right?

Versus a housekeeping company.

And I’m speaking from personal experience here.

I have lots of housekeepers that have stepped in and helped with some of these other responsibilities.

We’ve talked about this before.

I sort of just want to recap it today and highlight some of these benefits that you may have overlooked if you’re hiring your housekeeper directly.

If you go way back to episode 44 and 45, we talk about the different housekeeping options.

We also talk about where and how to find them and how to hire them.

Of course, we have a lot of resources for free that you can find on our website at strriches.com.

So if you’re out there and you’re having challenges with your large property manager, well, you have other options, right?

If your reviews are being affected because of cleanliness, then you’re making less money.

So you can hire your own.

We’ve talked about a number of ways to find your own housekeeper.

You can go on thumbtack.com.

You can go on Nextdoor.

You can go on Turno, formerly known as Turnover B&B, a network just for housekeepers where you can see the reviews.

If you’re switching from a property manager, well, then you can certainly afford to pay a housekeeper a little bit more money, right?

And then they’re going to be much more motivated to make sure that they’re doing a really good job for your property.

Again, if you’re working with someone directly, they’re going to get a sense of ownership with your property.

They’re showing up to the same property each and every week, whereas these large housekeeping companies, they just physically can’t do that because they’re covering too many properties.

Of course, there’s lots of tools to help you manage the housekeeping.

And so we use one called Breezeway.

We’ve talked about that before.

But you’ll want to create custom checklists.

You can include photos in there.

You can include requirements.

Lots and lots of tools to make sure that the turnover is done properly.

Some of the other things that our housekeepers we work directly with have been a really big help with is leaving personalized messages for our guests, leaving some beer or snacks in the fridge, buying our supplies on our behalf, making sure that our amenities are stocked and ready to go, keeping an eye on your surveillance cameras.

If you have cameras there at the property, you know, during that housekeeping turnover, sometimes our guests don’t check out on time.

And if you’ve given your housekeeper access to the camera, well, then they don’t have to leave their home early to show up there.

They can just monitor the camera.

So you have a lot more flexibility if you’re working with someone directly.

We know that these large property managers, unfortunately, working with really large housekeeping companies, they’re just dropping the ball.

So I just wanted to highlight a couple of those benefits of working with someone directly this week.

I hope that gave you a little bit more insight.

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

If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, then you know that I’ve been managing my properties virtually for years and years.

My team and I have managed thousands of guests.

We’ve learned a ton and I’m really happy with the progress and the growth we’ve made.

In fact, we’re now big enough to help manage your properties as well.

Our team has a ton of experience from the inner city apartment to the large lakeside retreat.

We’ve worked with all types of properties across the nation.

We’ll help to take the management workload off your plate while earning top revenue and excellent guest reviews, all while charging an industry low fee.

If you’d like to find out if your property fits with our program, just head to strriches.com.

There you’ll see a property management button.

Again, that’s strriches.com.

Just click on the property management button, and we look forward to chatting with you soon.