Private rooms in one house--tips and best practices

[Sydney47]

Hi everyone!  I am a pretty seasoned host and recently listed a 4 bedroom/3 bath house.  I am seeing that a huge house in this market is not very high in demand so I am going to try renting private rooms.  The house is conveniently located in a fast growing city--lots of government contactors, corporations, and very close to the medical district for traveling nurses, etc.  Two of the bedrooms are masters (King master and queen master, each with an ensuite full bathroom, Roku TVs, and soon to be work station in the room).  The other 2 bedrooms (one full bed;  one full/one twin bunk beds) would be sharing one bathroom.    I am thinking about  listing each as private rooms--2 of them will have private baths, common shared space--fully stocked kitchen, living room, family room, work station, washer/dryer, yard, etc.  What are some pitfalls and best practices?  This house is solely for guests--we do not live on property and we want to keep the option open for it to be rented as a whole house too. 

We live out of town and have a smart lock for the main entrance which is terrific to be able to control via an app.  We just ordered a smart lock to install on each guest room as well.  I plan to create a small work station in each of the master bedrooms, and they have their own Roku TVs in the room too. 

I'd like to ask for any tips, best practices, if you have a different lease agreement, pitfalls, advice, etc you can share. 

I will be creating separate listings for each of the rooms, and I am aware that I need to be vigilant to block off dates when the whole house is booked and vice versa.  I'm just thinking about small logistics--housekeepers--do they clean the common areas too?   How should I tweak house rules (if at all from my current one?). Any horror stories to be aware of?  

Thank you in advance for your help and wisdom!

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Sydney47 the risk you run is one drunk/misbehaving guest could cause terrible reviews from all the other guests

[Sydney47]

Thank you for your input.  Alas--every host's nightmare.  It certainly is something to consider, and I am considering every negative thing that could happen.  I have read through and watched other host videos and it seems like people who are willing to share common space with others tend to be pretty considerate and travel quite extensively.  The scenario you brought up is definitely possible, but is it probable?  Not sure but I am willing to take the risk to try it out.  I think we as hosts want to provide the great guest experiences and being very clear in the listing of what the guest should expect of the space and continuing to be vigilant about accepting guests with high ratings, etc will help to a certain degree. 

 I plan to continue offering the whole place if someone wants to book the whole house-and I know it'll take some coordination logistically to block off the rooms if booked as a whole and vice versa if just one of the rooms is booked.  It's just been vacant too much and with having 2 master suites with ensuite bathrooms, I think it might be a great strategy for now.  Will definitely keep everyone updated if interested. 

Thanks again!

[Huma0]

@Sydney47 

I host thee private rooms in my house. At the moment, only accept long term guests, but used to have a combination of short and long term.

While some guests get along great and become friends, others keep more to themselves but are polite to the other guests. There are rarely problems because, as you mentioned, it's important to screen guests and I try to be very vigilant about that.

However, very, very occasionally, some sort of issue does occur. I've had two problematic situations in this respect:

1. Very rude, demanding couple who seemed really highly strung. Did some extremely odd things that both I and my other guests found bizarre and even alarming. There were no obvious red flags at all in the booking request and the guest had around 25 positive reviews. The red flags started to appear in later messages (still not enough to alert me to just how truly awful these people would be) but in hindsight, there were a few things I could have done to avoid this situation.

Firstly, I should have checked the reviews the guest had left for other hosts because they were full of red flags and never accepted the request. Or, after accepting it, once the demanding messages and weird questions started to come in, I should have told the guest I didn't think my listing was a good fit for her and I would offer her a full refund if she cancelled. Lastly, I could have told them after their arrival (I realised on the first day they were guests from hell) that I didn't think it would work out and I would fully refund them if they left.

2. The second situation I think was unavoidable. It was with two guests who took an immediate dislike to each other, started arguing in front of me and the third guest and were extremely rude to each other. They wouldn't stop despite the other guest and I trying to diffuse the situation. Eventually, I had to talk to them like school children and tell them that no one is allowed to speak to each other like that in my house and if they didn't stop, they would need to leave. This worked. They then avoided each other for the remainder of the stay. I saw it was unavoidable because the guests individually were very nice. They just clashed.

So, although this sort of thing is really rare, think about the fact that you will not be on site to deal with situations like this. How are you going to handle it if one guest complains about another?

I'm not saying don't do it. Just vet, vet, vet and also have very clear, strict rules and insist that guests read them (I use an Easter egg question, which has helped a lot but even then some guests ignore parts of the listing/rules). Have an action plan for how you will deal with any situations that might still come up and consider that you may have to ask guests to leave, which would normally involve refunding them the remainder of their stay.

[Sydney47]

@Huma0 -Thank you for your detailed, helpful info.  These are great tips!!  Question:  What made you switch to all long term guests only?  Thanks again!!  Here is a link to my listing, if you'd like to see and I welcome any other suggestions.  We are planning to have work stations with rules in each room too.  

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/27190832?guests=1&adults=1&s=67&unique_share_id=ba2be3b5-7566-4192-96a1...

[Huma0]

@Sydney47 

You have a really lovely listing and I am sure it will be popular.

However, it did make me realise that there was something important I didn't mention before and that's damages. Theft I'm not so worried about (probably makes a big difference living in the house but I used to travel a lot for work pre-COVID so that was still a risk) as my guests have never stolen from me or other guests.

Damages, in contrast, happen frequently and this becomes more of a problem with different guests staying at the same time. I'm not talking about people trashing the place, but I'm also not talking about wear and tear either. Things, and I have a lot of nice things here, get broken/damaged and people very rarely admit to having done it. They often try to hide the evidence. 

Even when it's obvious who did it, e.g. the damage is in a guest bedroom, people will deny it and get really hostile if you press the point (even if you don't ask them to pay for it), or they'll just brush it off like it's no big deal. 

When damages occur in communal spaces, which guests share, it becomes even more complicated, as you can't really prove which guest did it even if you have a very strong suspicion (or reasons why you know for sure). Guests will usually tell you they know nothing about it and sometimes actually try to blame it on other guests. And, because I have a professional cleaner come in once a week, they could try to blame it on the cleaner too.

Unless you have some sort of clear evidence as to who broke what, it makes it almost impossible to claim for damages. I did do it once and Airbnb actually covered me, even though the guest did his best to try to blame everyone and everything but himself. I am not sure if I just got lucky in that case though...

Just something to bear in mind.

[Sydney47]

Thank you for your input @Mike-And-Jane0 .  Alas--every host's nightmare.  It certainly is something to consider, and I am considering every negative thing that could happen.  I have read through and watched other host videos and it seems like people who are willing to share common space with others tend to be pretty considerate and travel quite extensively.  The scenario you brought up is definitely possible, but is it probable?  Not sure but I am willing to take the risk to try it out.  I think we as hosts want to provide the great guest experiences and being very clear in the listing of what the guest should expect of the space and continuing to be vigilant about accepting guests with high ratings, etc will help to a certain degree. 

 I plan to continue offering the whole place if someone wants to book the whole house-and I know it'll take some coordination logistically to block off the rooms if booked as a whole and vice versa if just one of the rooms is booked.  It's just been vacant too much and with having 2 master suites with ensuite bathrooms, I think it might be a great strategy for now.  Will definitely keep everyone updated if interested. 

Thanks again!

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Sydney47 logistically booking the whole house is simple. Just link the calendar of room 1 to whole house, room 2 to whole house etc and the calendar will block the whole house if any individual room is booked and will block all the individual rooms if the whole house is booked.