Hi Everyone,
I've been a host in San Antonio since 2014, and I've seen some really big changes with Airbnb over the past couple of years. I understand they are a logistics company, driven to collect fees for revenue. That being said, I believe that there is a lot of "buck passing" going on now, and the brunt of the responsibilities are falling on hosts. In my neighborhood located downtown, my property taxes have gone up from about $3,500 to $14,000 per year, which is making hosting a "break-even" venture for me now that the market is saturating with more listings.
That being said, we now have to collect our own city and county taxes, which is fine, except for the fact that as a host, I like to have everything taken care of long before the guest checks in. However, with the new "guest partial payment" option, collecting any funds through the resolution center has become challenging.
If a guest has only partially paid, hosts are not able to request funds through the resolution request portal until the reservation is fully paid. Most of my guests claim they have no way of completing the payment on their own if they want to, and as hosts we have no way of knowing when they have fully paid. This then requires me to set up a reminder system to continually follow up with the guests to see when they have completely paid.
Not exactly my idea of preparing for a relaxing vacation --
Has anyone found a work around or solution to this?
I have reached out to Airbnb asking if they could at least provide a date they expect the reservation to be fully paid or to enable a feature in the resolution center that allows the request to be made but not paid until full payment has been received, then they could push it through.
Thank you all in advance, and happy hosting!
Kimberlee
