We all know that bad renters are bad news for anyone who runs a home-sharing business.
But some of the ways they impact you are less visible and less obvious than you thought. Their behavior can even damage your brand in the long term.
This is a quick list of five ways that bad renters can put a serious cramp in your style and make your life harder than it has to be.
1. More Time to Turnover
We can all look at the on-the-surface ways in which bad house guests mess up your home (we’ll get to those soon), but here’s one people don’t really think about until they look at their end-of-the-month or end of the year totals: turnover.
Your turnover time is defined as the time it takes to keep your listing constantly filled with new guests. If your turnover time is low, that means you have a revolving door of guests. One in, one out. This is good – this is how hotels stay in business.
On the other hand, if your turnover time is high, that means it takes more time to occupy your spaces – which is not good. Higher turnover time means less income for you and less profit (those rooms aren’t going to stock their own amenities!).
Bad guests increase turnover time because you’re going to have to spend more time cleaning up after them when they’re gone. You wouldn’t have to do that if you had guests who actually respected the property.
Which leads to the next point…
2. More Cleaning Fees
If you’re going to clean up after the renters leave a mess of the place, you’re going to have to spend money on cleaning supplies – or hire someone to clean it for you.
This obviously takes time and well, money. Cleaning supplies can start to add up pretty fast, which is why we recommend you have a budget just for cleaning. We also recommend going with a certified cleaning service or app that’s good for coordinated cleaning. It will save you time on the back-end so you can use it for other administrative tasks in your home sharing business.
You might have the best cleaning supplies and you may just get the best cleaning crew. However, a bottle of Clorox can only do so much when an irreplaceable part of your property is damaged.
3. Damage Irreplaceable Goods
Not only can bad renters create more turnover time and make the house a mess, but they can also leave lasting damage on your property. And not just any lasting damage, we mean the “Oh my god, they broke an antique European china set that’s been in my family for seven generations” kind of damage.
We recommend not keeping such sensitive items in your house or property that you rent, but there are some things that cannot be helped. For example, you may rent a property that isn’t necessarily a house, but it’s more of a “bed and breakfast with an Eastern theme”. To keep with the Eastern theme, you may have placed a large Buddha statue/fountain in the main area outside the property. That centerpiece cost you $5,000 to install, so it isn’t cheap. But guess what? If you have irresponsible renters, they may “accidentally” throw a party where one of the guests thought it would be a good idea to play “baseball with Buddha”. Now your statue is ruined. There goes five grand and a great centerpiece!
It’s scenarios like this that you have to be wary for. After all, you don’t want to find yourself on the large list of Airbnb nightmare stories.
4. Bad Reputation
We all know reputations mean everything (just ask Taylor Swift). But in the game of online home-sharing services, reputations can spell life or death for your business.
Let’s say all of the previous three things happened. Let’s say you’re dealing with the fallout from all of them. Let’s say in your in stressed-out mode. In your desire to clean up for your incoming guests, you forgot something.
Maybe you didn’t do as good a job of cleaning, maybe you forgot to replace the door that was broken, maybe a key attraction in the photos of the property aren’t there anymore (bye, Buddha). Your guest will be a less-than-happy camper.
After the experience, they leave a less-than-stellar review. One bad review may not hurt you, but pile up enough of them, people will be sure to stay away.
Don’t start the chain by having a property that’s not at it’s best because of some people you’ll never see again. We recommend joining the Rent Responsibly movement so you can learn from a community of other responsible hosts.
5. Shutdown to Business
We come to our final (and most important) point in why you should never let bad renters onto your home or property.
Have you ever heard of those Airbnbs that had a party thrown at the property and managed to anger everyone in the neighborhood? Have you ever heard of neighborhood associations and homeowners’ associations taking a stand against home-sharing because of said parties? Yeah – nobody ever thinks it could happen to them. But guess what? That could be you.
If you have a wild party, a bunch of rowdy guests and people who couldn’t care less about the surrounding neighborhood, you will most likely be a target of a homeowners’ association takedown.
That could mean the loss of being able to rent a key property, the loss of certain amounts of income and even the entire loss of your business. All because of bad renters – a situation which you can easily avoid.
The Solution
At this point, you may say “well, there’s only so much we can do”. That is true. You can screen and screen and screen until pigs fly, but you truly can’t tell what people will do once they are on the property.
You have your front side covered, but do you have your backside covered? If not, there are smart tools out there which can help.
For example, NoiseAware Gen 3. It’s the first and only privacy-safe noise monitoring solution built to protect your entire property – both inside and outside.
NoiseAware lets you know of a noise issue before your neighbors or authorities have time to get involved. With customizable thresholds and alerts, you can now monitor your property around the clock – day or night, rain or shine.
Well, that wraps up this guide. Sound off in the comments below!
What are you doing to prevent your property from being besieged by bad renters?
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