How to pay someone to "light" manage a property?

[Alexander65]

Hello fellow hosts. I have a 4 bed villa with pool that I've been renting out all year round on the usual short term rental platforms such as booking.com, vrbo and airbnb for the last few years.

I've been managing it myself up until now but I would like to find someone to manage it for me as I have to travel for work for extended periods of time. I'm curious as to what kind of financial arrangement other hosts put in place for a person that manages the property? My guests self check-in and I have a team that deals with the cleaning side but as we all know emergencies or ad-hoc requests mean that one really needs to have a person available on short-notice.

How do you pay someone for that kind of service? A per call out fee or a weekly / monthly rate? What do you find works best? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Pat271]

I live several states away from my short term rental.  I do all of the guest communications and bookings, and also control the door lock and thermostat remotely. I pay a property manager for local guest support for things like repairs, getting locked out, or anything else that would involve the necessity of an actual human being available on-site. He also manages and communicates with the housekeeper. The going rate for this type of service in my area is 10-15% of the gross rents.

[Inna22]

@Alexander65  I have tried several approaches. I tried straightforward cohosting just for the times I am traveling and paid the running rate, which is 20%. I found that the cohosts was eager to take on the project, particularly since my rates are pretty high and 20 percent is a lot but did not really fulfill their duties to my satisfaction. I found just as many emergencies coming out of them not doing what’s expected than from emergencies themselves, if that makes sense. 

I changed my structure and established a fee for things that need to be done. For example, it is $100 a week to just be on call. My guests were given the cohost’s phone number and they would call him with anything they need. This usually amounted to no more than “I can’t find extra toilet paper”. I wouldn’t pay $50 for an actual trip to for example check the property after guest checked out and then $50 plus time for repairs.

This worked a little better but at the end of the day I found myself either getting involved or overcharged. I now have a fantastic team of repairman, electricians, etc. that I fully trust and I find that I’m better off paying them an emergency rate to come out even if it turns out to not be emergency then relying on these other people to manage things.

I have to add that I have older kids that are usually able to at least take calls if I want to be completely out of the picture and on vacation. If I didn’t have them, I would still probably go with my fee-for-service structure.

I hope this helps.