DONT DO IT. I have a cute little bungalow in downtown Charleston in a transitional neighborhood. My daughter lives next door so its not like I don’t think the neighborhood is safe. We put in the listing that it is a transitional up and coming area. It is surrounded by a lot of new construction $1 million + that young professionals and students live it. There are some older homes that are lived in by minority residents (it is a downtown urban location). In January we furnished and decorated the a unit to rent 30 day. Ten out of 12 guests have loved it and left us great reviews. We had two guest show up and freak out because of people living near them that don’t look like them and wanted out of the reservation.
The problem with 30 day reservations is that you can’t rerent it. You hold the unit for the guests (usually months in advance), if they cancel day of checkin, we usually can’t rerent because you have another guests coming in w/in 30 days and you no longer can meet the 30 days required by the city. Both times Airbnb sided with the guests and refunded their reservation. The racist guests found reason to be upset. One guest complained about a dirty air vent but refused to let us into the unit the day of checkin to clean it for them. They left the next day and Airbnb refunded them the entire stay (including the cleaning fee and the one night stay!). Yesterday a guest checkin and messaged us via Airbnb at 11:00 pm that she felt the neighborhood was “too rough” and that one of the windows lock did not work.
We talked to her at 9:00am the next morning and told her that we would have the lock fixed by the end of the day. She said that it didn’t matter that she was leaving anyway. We fixed the lock on the window, sent pictures and a receipt to Airbnb by the end of the day and AIRBNB STILL REFUNDED HER! To make it even more insulting, they froze our listing and asked for a receipt and pictures that the repair was made which we had already sent them! This removed 2 months (1/6th) of our expected revenues. We also have ST rentals and it is one thing to lose a night here and there from crazy guests, but you can’t afford to lose months. When we converted this property to 30 day rental (STR not allowed there) we budgeted for decorating, utilities, & the gaps we expected to have between reservations but we didn’t budget for having 2 months of income removed from us by AIRBNB! This is not sustainable. We will need to convert back to long-term leases or only list on VRBO where can be assured that we will receive rent. All the work and risk and we will be making less than what we made before because of these 2 months.
Airbnb ALWAYS STANDS WITH GUESTS AND NEVER WITH HOSTS. Funny that 30 day rentals are supposed to be AIRBNB big new thing. DON’T DO IT. If I haven’t convinced you yet, I have 2 other horror stories. We have another little cottage that we rented as a 30 day rental. Guests search and see a super cheap daily rate for a 30 day stay compared to expensive STR . They want the cheap rate but don’t need 30 days. They reserve the unit for 30 days, stay a week and then find a “problem” and contact Airbnb to get a refund for the remainder of their stay. OF COURSE AIRBNB GIVES IT TO THEM! They got a super cheap rental and we got an empty unit for 3 weeks that was unrentable.
One refund was given because the guest said we had bedbugs. Our exterminator came out and inspected the unit and provided a certified letter stating there were no bed bugs. We begged them to call an exterminator of their own to come inspect the unit. But nope. We were out 3 weeks revenue & the cost of exterminator visit. Another guest stayed 2 weeks and then complained about cleanliness because of crumbs in the toaster oven. Yep, refunded the remaining 2 weeks. I loved Airbnb but they have lost their soul. The hosts are nothing. What ever the guest say is goes. Airbnb is perfect for dishonest guests who want to work a deal because they know Airbnb will bend to them.
Another problem with their host service is that you talk to someone different every time. This last issue was messaged to us by one person, we responded via app, we called in and spoke to another person and then a third person refunded the guest without even reading the messages. I’m done. August the unit goes back to regular rental, more money and less hassle.
Sad because we had so many guests who loved this unit and it would have been a good deal for use if Airbnb hadn’t stolen 2 months from us. I know this is long but hoping that someone at Airbnb actually reads these and realizes there is a problem (we interestingly have never had this problem with VRBO reservations).
