After listening to everyone's advice, we finally found a reliable cleaner. We interviewed three people with the third one being the one we went with. After cleaning the house together one time, she's now cleaned the house three times herself in the past week. She charges $75 a cleaning. It takes her about two hours to clean with an assistant. We couldn't be more pleased. It's given us more time to work on our other business.
Why do we like her?
- She gave us a price when we asked. Strangely, the other two people we interviewed kept asking how much we would pay. After we gave each a tour of the house, we just said to call us and let us know how much they wanted. Never heard back either of them.
- Cleaning is her business and she acts like a professional.
- She listens and is willing to learn. We assume she already knew how to clean, but it's important to us that she learns how we like the house to look. Arrangement is important to us.
- She communicates by text message. This is probably the biggest plus for us. Instead of having to talk on the phone and leave each other voicemails, we just use SMS. It's quick and easy. We're hoping to move her over to What's App since it's free (no SMS fees).
We want to thank a listener, April, for pointing us to "Transaction History" . I had seen this link before on our Airbnb dashboard, but didn't know we could dig so deep into our past rental history, costs, and profits. Certainly useful when doing taxes.
Michael sent us this funny listing for a rental that promotes the fact it's right above a Pokestop. I guess this could be a big draw to someone playing Pokemon Go? Anything to get ahead!
July has been our best month ever with 27 nights booked and a gross profit of $5,747. It's not like this every month for us, but it's great to see our busy months be especially busy. August is almost equally as booked.
Hope you guys are doing well!
Thinking of becoming an Airbnb host or guest? Use our referral code and get $20 off your next stay or $80 credit if you become a host!
Congratulations on finding someone to clean for you! It's great that you will able to use the time you are not cleaning to earn greater profits on eBay.
ReplyDeleteIt is funny how you miss what is left behind. When we went to our condo in July, we had been left lots of nice items, some from Whole Foods: beer, salad dressing, regular lime juice, Rose's sweetened lime juice, frozen pizza, pickled beets and dove candy bars.
I love hearing how many nights you have booked. I'm still at 122 nights for for 2016, but that is 23 nights more than I've ever had. I should get a few more nights at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
For 2017, I've already had inquiries for month long stays for January and July. I'm not sure they will turn into actual bookings, but it's always nice to get the inquiries.
I'm surprised more people don't book your place in Colorado during the summer. But maybe that's because it's purely a ski lodge area?
DeleteRegarding the car idea. You would have to police everyone. Do they have a valid drivers license, bad driving record (DUI, etc. ), then the insurance would be difficult also. Not sure how many companies would sell you a policy. Stay clear of it. If they fly in, let them rent a car at the airport. They would have to show them a valid license. That's my two cents worth. Can't wait to see the finished driveway. We stayed in a place in Vail once that had 121 stairs.
ReplyDelete