Property manager said she ordered two ricks of firewood on Thursday. Showed up after guests who rented both cabins were gone and there was zero firewood. I have a camera that overlooks the boat ramp because there have been instances of randoms showing up thinking all boat ramps are public. That camera also has one of the firewood racks in the picture. Checked and saw that one of the guests with help from others filled his truck up with all the firewood before they left. It’s just insane how shitty people are.
I'm looking at my options right now. I think I'll email them and tell them I'm going to give them a bad review as guests unless they send me the money.
3700 bucks for a 3 ton install is pretty down and dirty for anyone. Suspect it's a package unit or a perfect replacement split system. Rock n roll. Rheem is fine. Make sure the unit gets registered for warranty.
how much are you out? I’ve no clue what a Rick or cord of wood goes for these days. Is there a deposit they have via Airbnb or vrbo that you could request? worst case, if you know where the people live, I know some random people in southeast Okie and some law enforcement in other areas in the state. I’m happy to inquire about what solutions you might have.
Unless they had a TAMU ritual on your property, isn’t that simply theft of property? Your person to holler at would be BamaNug
I would probably let this go and chalk it up to cost of doing business before sending them an email threatening a bad review. If they report you to Airbnb or VRBO, you run the risk of getting your account suspended and that’s not worth this cost. You could request the money through whichever site was used to book and provide video proof and receipts and see if the site will back you and force them to pay but again I would just be prepared to eat the cost. Leave them a bad review for sure but don’t threaten them. That’s usually an easy way to at least have the review removed.
The site would definitely investigate and if you have video it should be fairly straight forward. Obviously much easier to get them to pay you straight up. I would definitely message them and ask them about the firewood (on the platform) but I’d stay away from threats of rating retaliation
100% send them the video and tell them you're going to call the police, file a report for theft, and leave a bad review of them on AirBnB.com They'll get you that $140 quick as fuck.
I've had a few disputes through airbnb, and I've always received the money. Tell them you have video and if they do not pay you will take this beyond airbnb. That's chickenshit, fuck letting it slide. Worst I've had was a couple that spilled candlewax all over the bed and sheets (sounds like a wild night) and the sink was FILLED with every dirty dish in my place, covered in food.
this is probably the route we will go. It's quite the risk doing anything that might effect the listing on VRBO. And it's $140 so not the end of the world. More than anything, it's just another example of how shitty people are
I agree that ratings are everything, but I also know airbnb will remove a shitty listing if it's challenged/disproven. Not sure about VRBO tbh I haven't had any issues while I've been a host, but I stayed in Atlanta for a friend's wedding once, and this lady left me an awful review claiming I brought "my little white dog" and there was dog hair all over her unit. I raised the issue to airbnb, and the lady responded with "I have video of [Nug] and his dog outside my unit." I don't own a little white dog, nor did I fly from Seattle (the home city in my profile) to ATL with a dog. I asked her to please produce the video, and told airbnb "there is no video because this didn't occur." When asked to produce the video the host dropped the issue and my bad rating was removed. I know $140 isn't a lot, but I don't think there's a lot of risk in escalating it -- especially if you have video. I'd be confident that VRBO has some system in place to remove fraudulent/obviously retaliatory reviews.
the issue with the video is my property manager took her sweet ass time updating the listing and we hadn't said that there was a camera on property yet.
Does that matter? Every Airbnb I've stayed at I assumed there was at a minimum video of the outside. I've rented places with Ring doorbells and hadn't seen that in the listing
Do you have neighbors? My first step would be to ask the guy, "Hey man, all of my firewood is missing, any idea? Did you really use all of it?" If he denies, something like "my neighbor saw you loading up a truck with firewood."
Yea, you can send/request additional $$$ through airbnb. I requested an extra $100 for new sheets and extra cleaning fees, they paid immediately. I've used that feature a few times. Sometimes my firewood isn't fully stocked, so I'll send them $20 to buy some. Once I had the propane run out while a guest was there, so I sent them an extra $50 for the inconvenience. Sometimes guests will ask if they can bring an extra person (I'll let people set up a tent and camp on my deck), so I'll request an extra $75.
I don't know shit about UX/UI/website design, but airbnb's interface for hosts is top tier. Simple to use, easy on the eyes, very straightforward using the calendar and updating your listing. I've always been super impressed with how easy it is.
I’ve told all my friends that want to get in STR business to be prepared to deal with the absolute worst people you could imagine. Most of the time things are fine but you will at some point have nightmares to deal with. Just have to factor that in the equation. I have one friend doing STR and I don’t think they are cut out for it. They saw that the returns are good but don’t think they factored their personality and the stress it was going to cause.
And VRBO is the exact opposite. Functions like an 80 year old grandparent designed and implemented it. Can’t complain because I get a lot of bookings but they could really use some work.
I agree with all this but I find VRBO's calendar much better for manually blocking stays. I'm at the point now were I get a lot of repeat renters so for most of them I just rent directly and cut all the fees out.
They just came out with a new beta version for their stuff, you tried that yet? It's a lot better so far, still not as easy to navigate as airbnb though.
I did briefly but went back to the old style but don’t remember the reason why now. I can mostly stay out of it by using my channel manager for everything. I’m using Your Porter currently. It’s not perfect either but the automated messaging capability is a must for me.
Yes they are. Hasn’t gotten old in almost a year that I’ve been doing it. Hopefully will have a second property in May so it will be double the fun.
Our spot has only been open for a short while but I'm already looking at a second spot. This is addicting.
I get unreasonably upset when someone from either bookend stay doesn't book a Saturday ... like June 5th. But the smaller cabin having all but two nights booked in the month is very nice.
May 1st - August 31 I require 1 week, Saturday - Saturday stays. Very much looking forward to that in a couple weeks, makes my life a lot easier and it's nice that I don't lose any random nights.
https://www.redfin.com/WA/Concrete/44677-Baker-Lake-Rd-98237/home/15647682 May be going to check it out this afternoon. Right outside of North Cascades NP.
How are you structuring these with lending? Here lately I've been putting them in my personal name so that I can get 15% financing so that I can keep more cash to move on more properties.
Yea, 15% down. This only was feasible based on the price. But it looks like the seller is getting cash offers of 10% over listing already, so not looking promising. Market is fucking nuts right now -- my good friend is a realtor and he'll make high six figures this year.
You can always commit some light mortgage fraud and call it your second home and do it at 10% I constantly put my lender in an awkward spot by asking how much they investigate
Luckily the place was small and I went in on it with a friend but I'm looking at spots of my own and 20% is a tough pill to swallow.
I’m getting 15%+ on my places so really have no problem paying the PMI. Goal right now is to pretty aggressively get as many as I can and that 5% starts to hurt that goal quickly.
I’m currently in the middle of closing on my second 10% down vacation home loan. I use them once or twice a year and I don’t have a management company running them which is what my lender has told me is the major stipulation. Also can’t be in the same market.
Not that I’m aware of. There are some guidelines like distance from your primary residence and you obviously can’t have more than one in the same location. Each lender has different guidelines. One that I talked to couldn’t do the 10% down and also use the income from my other vacation home in my DTI calculation. Another one I’m using can no problem.
Are people constantly stealing your shit? We make it down to our cabin in TN every 3 months. Every time we visit we find more stuff stolen. We got 3 different patent diagrams of moonshine stills framed for decor. Arrived last night and a guest stole one of them off the wall. WTF. At least these are cool. The other stole shit is so random. Visit before that, found someone stole our mama bear/papa bear coffee mugs. Why? EDIT: Someone also stole the large frying pan, raided the emergency weather kit (laterns, flashlights, candles, etc). Since Covid, we are used to guests stealing toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and cleaning products.
Haven't seen anything stolen other than the firewood, but people go out of their way gluing a $20 lamp back together instead of just saying, "hey we accidentally broke this, we'll pay for it"