Hi Nancy,
I definitely agree these new ordinances are coming directly because of management companies getting upset. And we have heard way too many horror stories from other Airbnbers around Big Bear to ever use a management company on the hill. Many of them take over 30%, the cleaning is always done by different people so you don't know the standard of cleaning that will happen and different cleaners each time means its very hard for new people to know if things go missing/how to take care of the quirks of the house (that most cabins in the area tend to come with). In one instance, employees of these companies using places to throw parties as well...
We found a great husband/wife cleaning team that also takes care of handyman services. They have been very helpful in making us successful in our first year. But they have reservations, and rightly so, about being our 24/7 emergency contact for the city as well as the in-person checkin for us as this is not what they were hired to do. And the forms they have to sign and notarize for the city are a little intense to say the least.
Anyway... very cool that you're thinking of getting a place up there! We love ours both for a rental investment as well as a place to escape the city throughout the year. Our place is nothing too fancy; we bought it knowing it needed some work, which we put in to be able to have it be rental ready. As for amenities, there are definitely a handful of them people seem to look for up there: view, hot tub, game room, location, sleeping arrangements. And there's really no right answer in what to have at your place. We can sleep eight people, so most of our bookings come from groups of 6-8. But there are plently of bigger groups than that looking to book places, so it kind of comes down to the size of place your comfortable with -- budgetwise etc. We don't have a hot tub, but we do have a really nice view and a game room with pingpong/foosball. We went a little above the budget we were looking for to purchase this place mainly because the view was really nice, and we've had many of our bookings choose us based off our pics of the view (slope and lake view) from the deck. We're a few minutes from Bear Mountain, which helps in ski season. And 10-15 minutes from the downtown village area. Someone told us before we purchased that around 70% of bookings would happen in the winter/ski season and 30% throughout the rest of the year, which we found pretty accurate after doing this a year up there. You can charge a bit more through ski season to help offset costs in the slower months. We didn't quite break even this year probably do to start up costs and some repairs. But it sounds like you're doing your research, so you probably know about the business license/inspection fees etc. for the area as well as the city tax taken from rentals. I think my biggest piece of advice would be to try and purchase something with a bit of a wow factor, whether it be a great view, access to the forest for hiking, deck with a spa on it, etc. so your listing sticks out. As you probably know, there are a ton of rentals throughout the city and surrounding area! Hope this has helped. Good luck!