Why Should You Hire a Vacation Rental Manager?
To answer this the question, “why should you hire a vacation rental manager,” it’s best to start with what a vacation rental manager does. A property manager is essentially there to do all of the things that you don’t want to or don’t have time to do. For example, marketing the rental, managing the tenants, collecting the fees, responding to maintenance requests, and paying the right taxes to the right state/county/city entities so that you don’t find yourself in any legal binds with any of them for not paying the appropriate taxes to the appropriate entities at the appropriate time.
Why hire a vacation rental manager?
The question everyone always asks is, “why should I hire a vacation rental manager?” The real question should be, “how much is my time worth to me?” Because when you rent one or more properties for short term rentals, it very quickly becomes a full time job. You constantly have to watch when people are coming in, when they are leaving, did you get paid, did you put away the right amount of taxes, did you put away enough to pay your cleaning crew, did you remember to call the plumber for that stopped up toilet? You get the idea, and every rental you have, whether it’s a one night stay or a week-long stay, requires the same amount of effort. This can become overwhelming and take up more of your time than it’s worth to you.
Vacation rental managers take the hassle out of all of it. They:
– Market your rental through various sites and make rental bookings.
– Take care of maintenance issues, including finding the appropriate professional, scheduling the work to be done, and ensuring that those professionals get paid.
– Collect and pay all of the taxes to the various government entities at the right times.
– Manage the guests – helping them to check in and check out, answering any questions they might have, and solving any problems with the unit. The vacation rental manager takes care of everything and gets your guests back to their vacation.
– Take care of cleaning. The vacation rental manager hires the cleaning company, schedules the cleans, and makes sure they are completed.
Vacation rental managers do a whole host of things more than that. Those are just some key things that will always come up when you’re doing it yourself.
Why should you hire Beachside Solutions?
Now that we’ve shown you why you should hire a vacation rental manager, why should you choose Beachside Solutions as your vacation rental manager?
– We have years of experience in getting guests in and out and assisting in the process.
– We are local, (not all vacation rental managers are), which means that we can physically be on-site at any time to address any issues that might arise, and to ensure the safety and well-being of your unit. After all, if you’re renting it, it’s an investment, and you want to protect your investment the best that you can. As do we. For example, we have age restrictions during college party times like spring break and the end of the school year to prevent any young college kids from throwing wild parties in the unit (which ends up costing the owner more than they made for the reservation most of the time). There are a lot of other ways we protect your investment, such as maintenance upkeep, and making sure it is stocked with the things that it needs such as dining ware and the proper furniture. We’ll even receive deliveries of furniture if need be.
– We have in-house cleaning crews and reliable maintenance contractors who are directly responsible to us, so we don’t have to go through the hassle of trying to find good cleaners or handymen.
– We charge less. The industry average is usually between 18 – 30 percent. We charge 20% so we are at the very low end of that scale. We do that because our cleaning department is quite a bit larger than our vacation rental management side, and we are in almost every building on the beach. We are familiar with them.
– The vacation rental management portion of our company is very small. For the owner, this means a lot of individual attention is paid to your unit.
– Being local and having experience with this business for so long, we know what events in the city are going on aside from regular holidays, and when. We know which events bring in more tourists, and how to price the units accordingly. For example, if you owned a place in New Orleans, and you rented it for $100/night on regular days, you would know that during Mardi Gras there is an extreme demand for places to stay and you would adjust your rates to make more money during that week.
What will my return on investment be?
The next question everyone will always and should always ask is, “what will the return on my investment be?”
The responsible answer to this question would be “we can’t guarantee any certain dollar amount.” Anyone who guarantees you a certain return is selling you snake oil. In the last two years in Panama City Beach, with Hurricane Michael in 2018, which left many owners under construction well into the rental season of 2019, to COVID-19 which began right before the rental season of 2020 and locked down a lot of tourism, nothing can be guaranteed. However, what we CAN do, is do a detailed property analysis of comparable properties called a pro-forma, which is the exact same thing a realtor does when selling your house. We find similar properties, how much they rent for, how often they’re rented, and then make an educated guess as to what your unit should rent for and when (because it changes throughout the seasons). Then, we’ll give you a rough estimate of what you should make under normal (not ideal) circumstances. Ideal circumstances don’t always happen, which leads to disappointment and frustration for an owner who has been promised something that cannot be guaranteed.
Our mission is to completely take the hassle away from our owners, so they just collect a check every month . We want them to know that their property is being taken care of and that we are trying to get them the highest return possible because, after all, we are working for a percentage of that return, so we want it to be as much as it can be. We are always completely transparent with our owners and take the time to keep in touch with them to let them know what’s going on with their properties. Our website has a lot of FAQs that owners have asked me over the years, which I hope will help. Please visit us at www.beachsidesolutions.net for more information or to contact us to manage your vacation rental.