[00:00:02] This is Short Term Rental Management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl.
[00:00:16] Spring break. Spring break. Everybody's talking about spring break. Everybody wants to know how to handle parties at their house. And how do I tell these people not to rent my house? And oh my goodness, these people sound like they're going to rent my house for spring break.
[00:00:33] On today's episode of Short Term Rental Management. So I do want to start with the fact that Airbnb has changed their age limit policy. You are now allowed to choose what age your minimum is for your booking guest, which means the person who actually booked the home on Airbnb up to the age of 25.
[00:00:51] Same thing on Verb. You can choose on verbo. You've always been able to choose on Verbo.
[00:00:55] And check with the other platforms. We're not going to go super in the weeds on that today. But you will need first and foremost to decide what is your minimum age for your property.
[00:01:08] This will somewhat weed out the spring break because spring break implies college.
[00:01:17] And why would a 25 year old be spring breaking? Well, I mean, I know I knew plenty of guys that were doing that, you know, matter of fact, they were the ones to look out for those 20. Those 19 year olds still had a future.
[00:01:30] I'm kidding, of course, But I'm going to cut right to the chase in general if you are asking about this. It's just a. You're, you're new.
[00:01:42] The goal here is to rent the house. So we need to get over being scared of renting the house. That's what it breaks down to for me when I hear somebody that's worried about spring break parties, et cetera. I hear somebody that is new and nervous.
[00:01:57] And sooner than later this will become old hat.
[00:02:00] Okay, honest, I'm gonna tell you a little story here. I remember years ago, I was at my biggest rental. It's still my biggest rental to, to this day. We were, I was on the second floor with my cleaner. We were just chatting it up. I happened to be there while she was there that day.
[00:02:16] And the house next door is a very large home. It's a big home.
[00:02:22] This is a 5 million dollar plus home, I would guess. And it's, it's got to be eight bedrooms or more. Big, giant swimming pool.
[00:02:30] So that day was springtime and there was a large amount of young people at that swimming pool.
[00:02:39] And my cleaner, I said to my cleaner, I said, look at that house. Look at all those people in that pool.
[00:02:46] Is that a Nightmare is that, does that give you anxiety just to look at that? And she looked over and she looked back at me and it didn't even register. You could see it didn't even register in her brain.
[00:02:58] She looked over there and she goes, she looked back at me, she goes, look, that house is going to be spotless.
[00:03:06] And that was the end of it.
[00:03:09] And to a certain extent, you know, she was right. You know, you got to keep this in mind. For one thing, the, the, the, the, the spring breakers that are bringing a ton of people in, like partying, they're nervous that they're going to get in trouble, that they may have broken a rule, that kind of thing. So a lot of times they keep it clean and play by the rules.
[00:03:28] All right, so it's one thing to note, and my point of that is, is that at a certain point you're going to understand that what you're doing here is renting a house. And you're just going to rent it or you're not going to make it.
[00:03:39] So that's one thing to keep in mind. Number one, rent the house.
[00:03:48] Number two, some rules, how to get upstream, how to prevent this from happening. Well, you always need some sort of a system for making sure you're not booking riffraff, which we talk about this a lot extensively in Management Monday, which is world famous. We've been doing Management Monday for a long time. You can find management
[email protected] we'd love to have you, but really what you're doing is you need to have a few rules set up to weed out the idiots. Because in long term rental we have background checks and credit checks and we're doing, you know, we're checking their past employment or current employment, their past landlords, et cetera. None of this happens in short term rental. Why? No tenant rights.
[00:04:30] So we need to have a very nice set of house rules, which I'm not going to get into. I'm not going to just hand you a set of house rules, but I will say that in most cases you can find them on your neighbor's listing.
[00:04:41] You know, if you're enemy methoding, so you have to, you need to have a very nice set of house rules. But also you gotta understand that the guest is probably not going to read the house rules.
[00:04:55] So it's best to set up a couple of messages that go out right after they booked and say, hey, just in case you missed it, here's our rules. And the two that you're really looking for are don't bring extra people and no noise after. You know, I usually say 10 o' clock at night.
[00:05:12] All right.
[00:05:14] And also you give them. And this is the Airbnb new policy as well. The new Airbnb Age policy says that you have to let them cancel penalty free. And we've always done that, no problem there. If you don't like these rules and you're trying to bring extra people and throw a kegger, feel free to cancel. We'll give you a full refund.
[00:05:31] You're weeding them out. And it's very simple stuff. I can't believe I have to tell you this.
[00:05:39] So have some rules in place. And then furthermore, on the rules, you could, you could ask them for their driver's license when they get to the home.
[00:05:48] You're not allowed to ask. Airbnb's new policy says you're not allowed to ask them to upload their driver's license on the platform. Does that mean that if you have a way to do that on owner res or, you know, your management software, which a lot of the softwares do, that that's not allowed now, maybe you'd have to ask Airbnb. They probably don't even know.
[00:06:07] Again, it's a brand new policy, you know, so also you can ask them for how many cars they're going to bring. That's another one I do is, hey, this, this driveway fits this number of cars. Even if you're in an area that doesn't have a rule or a law like that's in Florida, you get, you get a certain number of cars you're allowed to have in the driveway. Some areas with a lot of very functional short term rental regulations that are set up for folks that are renting single family homes overnight have a maximum number of vehicles involved with their permit process, which is a great thing. That means that the area cares and is being diligent. So I would recommend you do this even if your area doesn't have a maximum number of cars. Because if you sleep, it's just common sense here. It's easy math to a certain extent. I'm surprised I have to explain this, but it keeps coming up constantly on Facebook, etc.
[00:07:05] So here I am. If you sleep 12 people, but they're bringing nine cars, pretty good chance you're going to have too many people in there, right? So let's say you have a four car maximum, three people per car, maybe four people per car, they could maybe push it over the limit. You know, short term, Shop plus has live and recorded Sessions on the following topics.
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[00:08:26] Now in most cases these are it's just a regular driveway. You're only going to fit X amount of cars anyway unless they, you know, shoehorn them in there and like do Tetris, which is annoying, you know. So I would say you need to be very serious about having a rule for number of vehicles. This home, like I have a five bedroom that we only have room for two cars in the driveway.
[00:08:46] There's no law against it, but that's what we have room for. So I'm happy with that.
[00:08:53] Like if you can't get all of your people to this home in two cars, then this isn't the home for you.
[00:08:59] Again, it's about setting expectations.
[00:09:02] And then we do get the occasional idiot that says we, what do we do with our third car? What do you mean third car? You can't bring three cars to this house. What you do with that car is not my problem. But if you park it in the street, it will be towed.
[00:09:15] This is very simple property manager stuff. It's the same thing at an apartment building.
[00:09:20] If you have a car at an apartment building that's busted down and has three tires and it's been sitting there for a week, the most cases, if you have a good property manager, they're going to tow it.
[00:09:31] If you have a car that's being worked on in the parking lot of an apartment building, I, I'm just saying apartments because I have apartments and I have experience with this. If you have a car that's leaking oil all over hell in the driveway and of an apartment building, a good property manager is going to notice this and have the car towed.
[00:09:48] Now again, some states you do have to have a sign that says if your car was towed, call this towing company. The towing companies will do that. By the way. You can call a towing company and say I need a sign. They'll come put it out there because they know that they're, they're looking to get business.
[00:10:04] They're using your driveway as a marketing tool.
[00:10:07] And if this driveway gets me a tow every now and then, let me put up a free sign.
[00:10:12] Now that's.
[00:10:14] I don't have tow truck signs in my. My short terms, but I'm just, you know.
[00:10:21] So in other words, do you have an age limit? Do you have a maximum number of people? Do you have.
[00:10:30] A time at night when there need to be quiet time? Quiet time is a good, good way to help this.
[00:10:35] And then a maximum number of cars.
[00:10:41] And the. And the idea is to enforce this is not. Is to not have to enforce this. In other words, we're busy in most cases. The folks are listening to this podcast are usually regular folks with jobs, and they're just doing this on the side. Or maybe they're professional property manager. That's a whole nother thing. But the, the goal is to not have to enforce this. In other words, we don't want to be sitting around looking at our cameras, seeing how many cars are in the driveway. So you need to hit them with these rules up and then get them to cancel if they're trying to break these rules. Simple as that. It's common sense.
[00:11:11] Now let's go further into the age thing, because I'm 18 and older.
[00:11:21] Even though Airbnb just recently, like last week, decided they're going to allow you to be 25, 22, 23, 24, 25 and older, if you would like.
[00:11:31] I used to be 25 and older until Airbnb raised the stink and made everything 18 and older. And then I switched and I'm going to stay there because I did not notice a difference.
[00:11:39] So this is what we call an nwa this is an Avery's second book.
[00:11:46] No. Wrong answer. You can choose an A minimum or a maximum. A minimum age limit if you. If you so choose. I'm good with 18. Disney World's 18. Most hotels are 18.
[00:12:00] I'm good with it.
[00:12:02] Being 18 does not mean they are shitheads. Matter of fact, I know that I was more of a shithead when I was 26 than when I was 18, guaranteed.
[00:12:14] All right, so the age limit itself is not going to get you out of the weeds, and it's not a problem solver, and it is totally up to you what you want to choose.
[00:12:27] Okay, food for thought there. I'm sticking at 18. That's just me. So again, age limit, quiet time.
[00:12:34] How many people. Don't bring too many people. And how many cars are in are you planning to bring? That should weed out all your riff raff right there. As far as Spring Break is concerned.
[00:12:42] Also want to bring up the fact that if they ask you if they can come, they're probably pretty good kids.
[00:12:49] Hey, you know, this is very common. Hey, matter of fact, this. This comment here is probably why I'm having to make this podcast.
[00:12:56] Hey, some houses are 25 and older. Can we rent your house? And it happens to be, you know, the first week of April or whatever, spring break time.
[00:13:07] And that's when new folks who have never done this before, they're going into their first spring break, they get nervous. Oh, man, these. These might be. These kids might be partying. Just ask them.
[00:13:17] Be honest with them. Hey, just so you're aware, we do have quiet time. And if you are planning to make noise after this time of night, this house is not a good fit. You should find another house. And there's plenty of other houses that don't care.
[00:13:31] Problem solved.
[00:13:34] But I will also say that those ones that are like, hey, we're only 19, is it okay if we rent your house? They're usually kicking. They're great guests in a lot of cases.
[00:13:42] So why would you turn them away now if they're 19 and trying to bring.
[00:13:47] Now this is a super easy cut and dry One here you're 10 at your house is 10, 10 max people. And they're like, hey, we're 19.
[00:13:54] Is that okay? And also, by the way, we're trying to bring 16 people.
[00:13:59] No, no.
[00:14:04] You're trying to rent a house that sleeps 10 people. You're renting the wrong house. It's as simple as that. Always stick to your policies.
[00:14:12] You can change your policy later.
[00:14:14] Your policies can be changed after they've been enforced, not while they are being enforced.
[00:14:21] That's huge. That's a big one.
[00:14:27] And lastly, I'll just say, do your damn job.
[00:14:30] If you're worried about spring break kids throwing a party and destroying your house, then you suck. As a landlord. I hate to tell you, you probably shouldn't be managing your own property.
[00:14:42] But in your defense, and are also some good news here, I will say that 98% of the time you can tell.
[00:14:50] The bad guests will out themselves. You'll be able to tell. You can tell them no. You can move on to the next one. All right?
[00:14:59] Simple as that.
[00:15:01] Don't be afraid of spring break. It's a very fruitful time of the year. They are going to party. The goal is to have your house be the lesser of the party than your neighbors. And I'm speaking specifically to my beach folks, because your neighbors on a beat in the beach, on any beach in America, really, at spring break. These are high school, these are college kids that have the week off, and they're letting it loose.
[00:15:32] So if you are enforcing your rules and paying attention and being diligent, but you don't have to go over the top, you don't need a bouncer at the front door, and you are not the 10 loudest houses in the neighborhood.
[00:15:52] I think that's the goal. You want to be 11 or less on the noise level with your spring break guests, then you've succeeded.
[00:16:00] And it only lasts for three or four weeks, you know, so. And then maybe you consider having a longer minimum night stay or a shorter minimum night stay. Either one. You know, if you have a longer minimum night stay, you only have three or four guests through spring break. But if you have a shorter minimum night stay and they suck, they're gone in two or three days, you know, so.
[00:16:21] Not here to talk about minimum night stays today. Don't be afraid of spring break guests. Do your damn job. You'll be fine. Charge enough money that you're getting a good booking out of it and do your diligence. You've got to put in a little more work qualifying your guests during spring break than you do other certain, other times of the year. Simple as that?
[00:16:40] Simple as that. Bob's your uncle. I love you. Don't overthink it.
