Tim Hubbard (Short Term Rental Riches podcast) discusses the pros and cons of hiring an in-house housekeeping team and paying staff hourly for short-term rental properties. He argues that for investors with enough units, hiring hourly staff can lower per-unit cleaning costs, increase operational control (cleaning methods, supplies, training), and ease scaling and internal hiring/training. Downsides include recruiting and managing staff, the need to purchase and store supplies (and possibly add laundry capacity), and the risk that slow demand reduces staff motivation—making professional housekeeping companies preferable for very small portfolios. Closing includes a CTA offering a free ebook at restmethods.com.
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Last week we talked about hiring a professional management company for housekeeping. If you haven't checked out that video, jump back and take a look. This week we're gonna dive into hiring our own team members and paying them by the hour. The pros and cons. Let's jump right in. Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches. Quick actionable ideas to help you along your real estate investment journey, but with a specific focus on short term rentals. Welcome back everyone to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast. Happy you're here. As always, great to have you with me. It's great to see so many downloads on our podcast. It's really exciting. It's exciting to get feedback, so keep sending it and if you guys like the podcast, please share it with whoever you think will find value and hopefully we'll be able to continue providing you content for a long, long time as we all scale our portfolios. So today we're talking about hiring our own housekeeping by the hour. Last week, if you missed it, jump back, we talked about hiring professional management company. Quite a few differences there, pros and cons. We're talking about paying our staff this week by the hour. And who is this for? Well, this is for anyone that has enough rentals to justify it really. So it's really hard to hire someone by the hour if you're only doing a couple cleanings a week. But, but if you have a part time position, at least, you know, multiple hours a day or into a full time position, eight hours, where any time that you can basically fully employ someone, they're gonna be motivated to stay with you because you have enough work for them. And this is ultimately where everyone will be depending on the size of our portfolios. And so there's a lot of pros and there's a lot of cons. And I've been doing this for a while and I've been doing the other models that we talked about. I've hired housekeepers in multiple different ways and still use them based on the size of my portfolio in the different cities. I have different housekeeping methods. So let's start off with the pros. First of all, our cost per unit to clean is going to be less if we're paying by the hour. If it's not, then probably go back to hiring professional management company so that you don't have to worry about that. But that is the idea. As we scale, we get economies of scale and we can pay less on an hourly basis or, or we can have an overall cost per unit of cleaning that'll be far, far less. Most of the time, the professional housekeeping company. And along with the lower cost, we have more control. We have control over the chemicals and the cleaning supplies that we use. We have control over the way our units are cleaned. We have more control over our business and in general. So the pros of having our own team, well, some of them are obvious. If we're paying by the hour, then we're going to be saving a lot on our per unit cleaning basis. Now we also have to buy supplies, so remember that that comes as an extra operational item and it can get quite tasking really. I always have storage places at each property, but we're actually. I bought this commercial property I mentioned a couple times, and we're doing like a centralized storage here in Memphis because this is where the majority of my units are. And we're gonna have backup everything. It's gonna be fantastic. We're actually putting a laundry mat in there too, because we're doing so much linen and that's another piece to it. But by hiring our own team, we can control all of these things. So we have much more control and we have a lower cost per unit cleaning. And as we continue to scale, that's really, really important. Another beautiful thing about hiring our own team is that our employees or contractors, that's kind of a gray area if you're providing a schedule and they're working the same hours. So talk with your attorney about that. I am not a attorney myself, so make sure you get professional advice on that, whether or not the person you've hired is on a contract basis or, or an employee basis. But one of the great things about having your own team is that they can hire new people and they can train new people and they can take on other roles, maybe outside of your typical housekeeping, so, you know, doing inventory control and maybe talking with guests and helping with part of the management. So we just have way more control and we have a lower cost per cleaning unit. In a nutshell, that is the beautiful thing about hiring our own people. Now let's get to the cons. It's not always easy managing people or finding the right people. We talked in a prior episode about hiring people. So if you haven't heard that one yet, jump back on the podcast and check that out. I'm sure you'll be able to pick up a few tips for there if you're planning on hiring some new people. But that's. It's not always easy to hire new people. So that is a challenge in itself. But when you do find good people, they're great to have on board and we can't do this alone, right? So the better our team, the more we can scale and the better it will work out. So you're essentially running your own cleaning business. If you hire your own team, you're buying all the supplies and you're supplying the people to clean the units. So it's almost like its own business. Another challenge with hiring your own team members is that if work slows down or you don't have enough work for them, then they're probably not going to be very motivated to stay with you, unfortunately. And that's why we have different options for housekeeping at different levels of our our portfolio size. So if we have a few amount of units, we're going to hire professional housekeeping companies most of the time. But when we have a lot, we're going to be able to justify part time or full time positions and keep someone motivated, paying by the hour. So in a nutshell, we have lower cost per cleaning and we have full control over the supplies and our business and the ability to scale easier and hire people easier in the future. But it all comes at a cost. It's difficult sometimes to manage people. If there's a downturn for whatever reason, or if there's a challenge with one of your team members and they can't work for you anymore, you have to kind of start over with that versus a professional housekeeping company that maybe has lots of people on staff and they do all that for you. So there's a good option for everyone out there. It's awesome to find great housekeepers and great team members. I have some that I've worked with for years and we'll continue to work together for years and that has helped me scale a lot. So I think as you scale your portfolio, this is definitely an option if you're not already doing it. So hopefully that provided you a little insight into the differences between housekeeping options. Just remember, there's a good option out there for everyone. Until next time, I hope you guys keep scaling. I hope you keep finding new properties and have a wonderful day. Want to get on the fast track to financial freedom through short term rentals. Well, it all starts with the properties you acquire, but you want to make sure that you acquire the right property. I want to give you my ebook that will show you how to do just that. There is no charge. It's my gift to you for being one of our subscribers. Just go to restmethods.com that's R E S T Methods Com.
