Tim Hubbard discusses housekeeping strategies for short-term rentals, comparing hiring professional housekeeping companies (paid per unit) versus individual housekeepers paid per unit. He outlines pros and cons of professional companies (backup staff, supplied materials, hands-off, higher cost) and individual per-unit cleaners (flexibility, potential scalability, still relatively costly for few units). Teaser: next episode will cover hiring in-house staff paid hourly.
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One of the biggest challenges we have with our short term rentals is housekeeping. Well, there's multiple ways to handle it and this week we're going to dive into one of the two most common methods and that's hiring a professional management company and paying per unit. Next week we'll dive into hiring our own team members and paying them by the hour. So stay tuned. Let's get 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 to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast. Happy you're here again. As always, we're talking about housekeeping. It's one of the biggest challenges, it's one of the biggest operational pieces with our short term rentals and there's multiple ways to handle it. So this week we'll cover hiring a professional management company, but then also hiring our own person that we pay per unit. Next week we're going to jump into hiring our own team members that we pay by the hour. They're totally different. There's pros and cons to each, and based on where you're at with your portfolio, one of them will fit best for you. So I can tell you that in the three cities where I own and operate short term rentals, I'm using different methods. So what will tend to happen is if you just have a few units, then you're probably going to be paying a little bit more per unit. But as you scale, then you have more work for someone, you can keep them motivated and you can pay by the hour and basically create a full time position for someone. And so that's what we'll jump into next week. But let's get into the pros and cons this week about hiring a professional management company first. And then we'll jump into hiring our own person, our own housekeeper that we pay per unit. So the pros of a professional housekeeping company, well, they usually have a lot of staff, so you've got your backup options already taken care of. Right. If one person isn't available to clean your unit, they likely have other people to fill that spot. Whereas if you hire your own person, a lot of times that's a one person show and you got to have other backups for that. So, so that's one of the pros. They also provide their own cleaning supplies. And the more units you have, the more this becomes a lot of your operations. Ordering cleaning supplies and ordering sponges and soaps and all these things that you have to replenish on a normal basis in your properties. So if you've got a professional management company, they've already got all their supplies. One less thing you got to worry about. So they've got backup, they've got their own supplies. Another great thing about them is that it's pretty much just hands off. You don't have to train them, they're professional management company, they already know how to clean. Ideally, you find a company that's already worked with short term rentals because it is different than your normal housekeeping. That's what they do. They're set up and geared to help you with all of your properties and you can scale with them as well. Now the cons. Well, basically, as we add more properties, the more we have, the less we can spend on housekeeping per unit. But when we only have a few units, it's expensive. And a lot of times we, when we only have a few, we're using professional housekeeping company and they're gonna cost the most. But you do have a lot of peace of mind. And the reality is that if you only have a few units, it's hard to keep someone motivated if they're only cleaning one or two units a week. Whereas a housekeeping company, they're going all over town and they're cleaning a whole bunch of people's units. So they do cost more. That's one of the downsides. You also don't have the ability to, to add responsibilities with the housekeeping company. So a lot of times when we hire our own people, which we'll jump into in a second here, we can start adding responsibilities or we can use them for management, they can help us with guests, etc. Etc. Now, you can't do that with another company's employees unless you, you know, I don't know, you, you poached them and they decided they liked working for you more than they did for the housekeeping company, which, you know, I guess that could happen too. But the reality is they're working for a big company, they're staying fully employed and the chances of you being able to add more tasks with them is not very likely, it's probably going to stop at the housekeeping level. Now you still want to vet your professional housekeeping company. Well, if ideally they're already doing short term rentals. But I would always recommend the first few times they do any of your properties that you at least have a checklist of some sort you can check out properly. We'll put a link in the show. Notes for properlea, but that is designed for housekeeping. They've added a lot of other features. You can create a checklist where your housekeepers have to take pictures before they can finish a job. A lot of really cool things in there for making sure they clean your property the way you want. So that's professional housekeeping company in a nutshell. It's going to cost you a little more, but they have way more staff and it is peace of mind if you find one that's good. And they've already been doing short term rentals. Now, kind of like a side component to professional housekeeping company or another option, but still not paying them by the hour is hiring your own person who maybe has their own professional housekeeping company, but you're just paying them per unit and they're more of a one person show, not a big company. Now with those people you can scale easier. They're much more flexible in their terms. Right. So if you add more properties, maybe you can get a break per property, but you can also get help from them with your properties. And so I do that and I have some housekeepers I've worked with for years in Sacramento where I just have a few units now. I actually sold most of them, but that's what we've been doing there and it works out well. There's peace of mind with that too. Now it's difficult to have this option available to you again if you only have a few units. Because if you want to hire someone on a per unit basis and maybe only have one cleaning a week, or you have a couple cleanings a week, you're probably going to have to pay them a lot, you know, maybe as much as the professional housekeeping company. Otherwise they won't really be motivated, you know what I mean? They need to make money. And if you're only providing a little bit a couple times a month, it's just not enough to keep them in the game and on your team. So those are a couple of the professional options. Again, these are going to cost a little more, but you do get some of the securities with professional housekeeping company where you have scalability, you know, they have backup options already. They're already getting the cleaning supplies. If you hire your own person and pay them per unit, you're still going to be paying a little bit more per unit versus an hourly model. But you, you have the option of scaling with them, which can be fantastic peace of mind and well worth the money, believe me. So that in a nutshell is kind of couple options. These options will be for someone that either doesn't want to have to deal with anything or as little as possible or someone who's just kind of getting started with short term rentals. So next week we're going to dive into hiring our own team and paying them by the hour and that gets a little more complicated. But if you are growing and you're scaling, ultimately that will be what's best fit for you almost all the time. Just picture hotels, they don't hire outside housekeeping companies. Right. So we'll go over the pros and cons next week of hiring our own team. Till next time, hope you have a wonderful day.
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