I Manage 230+ Airbnb's: Here's My Housekeeping System

If you've got a great short-term rental setup, amazing, beautiful photos, and the best amenities in the block, well, that's not going to do you a lot of good if you don't have a good housekeeping relationship set up. And it's not just about finding a good housekeeper, but it's about staying organized and setting the right expectations with your housekeeper. Stay tuned as we dive into what our team has learned managing tens of thousands of guests and over 225 properties over the last decade. Welcome back to the Short-Term Rental Riches podcast. I'm happy you're here again. After all these years in the short-term rental industry, one thing remains the biggest predictor of your guest reviews. That is housekeeping and your property's cleanliness. Small changes in your review score because of cleanliness, the number one culprit, they translate into massive changes for your short-term rental's potential and revenue. We see in markets across the nation that the worst performing property can be earning 3 times less than the highest performing property with the same size property, the same size amenities, and most of that is attributed to reviews. Now, a lot of you have good housekeepers or you have good help that have the potential of ensuring that you never have bad cleanliness reviews, but you're maybe lacking some of the organization or you maybe haven't set the right expectations upfront with your housekeeper. So we've talked about finding housekeepers before. Actually, that's been a recurring theme throughout the last 6 years of this podcast because we know just how important it is. If you go back to episode 243, We have some great ways for you to find a housekeeper, but I've also got a new one for you because I just found a new housekeeper for one of my personal properties. And I got to tell you, it didn't take more than just a few minutes. So here's what I did. I went to Perplexity. Perplexity is an AI tool similar to ChatGPT or similar to Claude or Gemini, but it does a really good job at sifting through online websites. And I simply asked, where can I find a housekeeper in Davenport, Florida? That result pulled up a Facebook forum, great place to find housekeepers and referrals. There was already a post there of someone looking for a housekeeper in Davenport, Florida. I simply copied it and reposted it with my contact information and I got so many leads I just couldn't believe it. I actually had to take that post down later in the day and instead of include my contact information, I included a Google form on there with some really important questions that you always need to be asking your housekeepers. We'll make sure you have a link to that Google form in the show notes here, but we'll also be reviewing it in just a few minutes. I want to make a case for hiring your own own housekeeper versus using a company. Now, this isn't across the board, this isn't 100%, but there is a correlation in cleanliness reviews working with smaller providers versus working with bigger companies. And I'll give you just one big example. If you're working with a large national property management company, they exclusively work with large companies, right? If it's not in-house, because they need more staff, they need more backups. But a couple challenges that come up working with companies is one, if it's not the same person going back to property each time, then they don't really know if some little details are out of place. If the coffee table is supposed to be on that side of the couch versus that side of the couch, they don't have that eye like an individual housekeeper or a small team would have if they're the one consistently seeing your property. And they also don't feel as strongly about your property. When we work with smaller housekeeping companies or individuals, they actually grow a sense of ownership with our property, right? They're there, they're the ones cleaning it, and they take pride in that. The other thing that happens with large companies is that some of their housekeeping team maybe gets overworked. If we think about it, we've got most of our checkouts across the nation are usually on Sundays, Mondays, you know, people staying on the weekend. Of course, it really depends on the type of property. If you have a business property, for example, well, then it could be all during the week. The more units a property manager adds, the more housekeepers they need to add and the more systems they need to have in place to be able to coordinate that. Now, we're going to talk about some of those systems. And I don't want to say that this isn't doable, but I just want to give you the reality, the correlation between negative reviews and really large housekeeping teams. And I think we can see that pretty easily if we go to tools like AirDNA and we look at some of the nation's largest property managers like Evolve Vacation Rentals or Red Awning or Casago, right? They have really bad reviews across the board. And as we mentioned in the beginning of this episode, the number one culprit for bad review is cleanliness. So I already made the case for hiring smaller housekeeping teams or individuals, of course, with the back They take more pride in their work. They notice more of those small little details if something is out of place. And that all leads to better reviews. And it also leads to a better relationship with that person, right? You're in communication with them much more often than you would be a larger housekeeping company that's got various people coming in and out. I'm happy to say that one of the very first housekeepers I ever hired over a decade ago, over 11 years ago, is still working with me today. She still helps clean some of my short-term rentals, but she also manages all the other housekeepers for my portfolio in various cities. And so if you're working with an individual, you have these sorts of opportunities as well. So if you don't have your housekeeper yet, make sure you go back and check out episode 243. If you're in the process of hiring them, well, I promised I would give you my questions off the Google form. This is certainly not 100% comprehensive. I didn't want to scare people off by having too many questions, but these are the most important ones. The first one is their preferred method of contact. Sometimes that's on WhatsApp. A lot of times it's just normal text message. Phone call, whatever it happens to be. Our team uses Slack on the back end. You want to ask them how big their team is, or is it just them? Are they just an individual? Do they have backup? Do they allow for same-day turnovers? How far do they live from your property? And now I'm not asking this question to find out how close they are in case there's an emergency and they need to run back, although that's helpful. But the idea is we have things organized beforehand so those situations don't arise. I'm asking this question because I want to know how realistic it is for a housekeeper to want to come to my property every day. If they're 45 minutes away, but then there's traffic sometimes and it takes them more than an hour to get to my property, well, they're less likely to want to continue working for me than someone down the street, right? So ideally they don't live too far away. And also, just a side note, most housekeeping salaries are not like the upper echelon. You know, they're not high-income earners. So sometimes they might have car troubles and repairs are really costly. So the closer they are to the property, the less they have to spend on gas and the more likely it is that will stay with you for a really long time. Do they include cleaning supplies in their charge? This one is of course negotiable. If they do, what do they include? Sometimes cleaning companies include everything. Sometimes they include nothing. Do you have a problem cleaning up after pets? So this is important. Not all housekeepers like to clean up after pets. If they don't have a problem, how much more would they be expecting to charge? Now it's my recommendation, especially if you have a lot of housekeeping options, maybe you used one of the methods that we mentioned in the prior episode or by searching online, these days. If you have a lot of options, you can know pretty quickly what the going rates are in your market. And I think it's better that you set these rates. You know, if your rate to clean your house was $200 and they say they're okay with pets, then you say, great, we'll be happy to pay you an extra $30 per visit. Keep in mind, we don't allow more than 2 dogs, we don't allow cats, they're not over this certain weight size. So the more you can offer up front, the better. But of course, it is a little bit of a negotiation. You of course need to know how much they're going to charge for your size of property, and you'll You want to know how much notice they need in order to clean your property. If you're someone that gets really last-minute bookings and they're not currently on the schedule, you don't want to block your calendar because you're waiting for housekeeping. And so if this person is not available with short notice, then you need to have multiple options and you need to let them know that upfront. If someone's not available, then you're going to go to someone else, but you would prefer to build a long-lasting relationship and work primarily just with them. Okay, so with a housekeeper in place and with some good expectations in place, it's really important that we manage the turnover properly. And now there's a lot of tools out there these days that help you create checklists. There's one called Turno that a lot of people have used. We personally use Breezeway. We create a custom checklist for every property. We require photos before and after, and then we also take it a step further. We let them know that if a prior guest mentioned something during their stay or after their stay, or it showed up in the review, we're going to grab it from any of those resources and we're going to include that item in their next checklist. And sometimes this just pops up in the private feedback, right? Maybe the guest checked out and they said, hey, love the property, but you might want to check under that guest bedroom one more time. There's a couple little dust bunnies there. We're going to transfer that over to our housekeeper so that they know the next time they need to double check on that. And again, this goes back to working with smaller companies or individuals versus larger companies. Of course, this is helpful for anyone, but if it's a smaller individual, they're going to take a little bit more pride in that, and they're not going to forget those dust bunnies again. The other thing that we do is we let them know up front that we're really transparent with all of the reviews, both good and bad. So it's always nice to receive positive feedback, right? We want to show them that, we want to send it over to them, and we do. So if there's something that mentioned cleanliness specifically, we're going to send it over, and that is a feel-good opportunity. But we're also going to send the negative feedback, which is really crucial. And I would say if you have a housekeeper that has the same issue 3 times, then you need to start looking for another housekeeper. Of course, it depends on how long they've been working with you, right? If there were 3 times back to back, that's much different than 3 times over the course of 3 years, right? The more often these issues are happening, even with all the feedback, then the quicker you need to be looking for a new team member. Remember, poor cleanliness is the number one culprit for a bad guest review, and you cannot afford to have negative reviews back to back because of cleanliness. It will lead to a massive loss in your revenue, and it could even lead to you needing to redo your listings entirely and start from scratch. So make sure to set these expectations up front. I know a lot of housekeepers don't like technology, but the reality is it's not hard to use these applications. If we go back to my manager that's been with me for over a decade, she was very resistant to using Breezeway, which we currently use. But I would tell you that now she could not live without it. It shows them the schedule very cleanly. It keeps everything organized, and it really only takes a few minutes for them to understand how to use it. Breezeway also has different languages, you know, so if you're working with someone that speaks Spanish, then you could do that as well. So highly recommend using a tool like that. If you don't want to handle any of this, well, our team at Coorsely would be happy to do it for you. We already have all these processes in place. You can reach out to us at strriches.com. There's a little partner with us button and everyone on the team at Coorsely would love to partner with you. Okay, just a few more expectations. So you've already negotiated your rate with your housekeeper. You've included other potential rates for a pet, for example, or maybe if the the property is really dirty, then you pay them an extra amount. But I would leave those to a case-by-case basis because the reality is sometimes guests leave the property really clean and then sometimes they're not so clean. So it really does average out in the middle, right? And you don't want to set the expectation upfront that you're going to be paying more for every little thing. Another thing in regards to payment is the actual timing of your payment. So how often are you going to pay your housekeeper? How are you going to pay them? There's lots of easy ACH transfer options available with online banks today. We use a bank called Mercury. There's another one set up for real estate called Baselane. If you're using Terno, well then they've got that built into their system. They do charge a little bit more for that, and Terno does require that you're only working with housekeepers in their network. Can be a little bit more expensive, but it can be a good option as well. So how often are you paying them? I personally pay all of my housekeepers every other Friday. How are the supplies handled on the property if you're responsible for that? Do you have a lock cabinet? That's what I would suggest. They sell these little digital door locks now that just replace the knob. It's not like a deadbolt like the Schlage lock, but it has a little code right on the doorknob that you can easily set for your housekeeper to get in and out. That way no one needs to hold any keys or potentially lose keys. Another option these days is Amazon, and Amazon ships really quickly now depending on where you're at. You could either ship directly to the property, have it ready when your housekeeper shows up, or it's usually a little easier just to send to the housekeeper in advance and they bring it to the property for you. Another benefit to working with smaller teams or an individual is that they can keep an eye pay a lot of times on the little maintenance. Maybe that's just changing light bulbs, for example, or changing batteries in your door lock. A lot of times they also have a preferred maintenance person that they like working with, or maybe their husband, or maybe someone in their network is a handyman and they can do some of that communication for you. So those are my suggestions for now. I hope that gave you some insight and I hope that helps you out a little bit. I can't stress enough the importance of having good reviews because it really affects your revenue. And again, the number one culprit for not having a good review is cleanliness. And there's multiple things that lead to that, right? It's not just the housekeeper, but it's also the organization and the expectations that you've set up front. Your housekeeping team isn't just cleaning. They're protecting your reputation. They're growing your revenue and they're helping you scale. So take some action today. Audit your cleaning process and decide whether a direct hire housekeeper could be the best thing you do for your short-term rental this year. Until next time, I hope you have a fabulous week. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]