What short-stay management costs in Hamilton
Our fee is 20% of the accommodation income left after the booking site takes its commission, and that 20% includes GST. There is no setup fee, the appraisal is free, and guests pay the cleaning fee. The costs of owning the home stay with you: power, internet, rates, insurance and repairs.
A worked example
Say a guest books your home for four nights at $250 a night. That is $1,000 of accommodation. If the booking site charges 15% commission, it keeps $150 and $850 is left. Our fee is 20% of that $850, so $170 including GST, and the remaining $680 is yours.
The guest pays a cleaning fee on top of the $1,000. That pays for the clean and the linen, so none of it comes out of your $680. Commission varies between booking sites, so the dollar figures move a little from booking to booking, but the calculation does not change with the booking site or the length of the stay.
What the 20% pays for
We have the home photographed professionally at our cost, write the listing and put it on Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo and our own booking site. Danelle sets the price every day against what is booking nearby. We screen guests, answer their questions before they arrive and look after them during the stay, and there is someone to call at any hour.
Tea, coffee, toilet paper and the other everyday supplies guests use are restocked by us and covered by the fee, so you are not buying them. The cleaning itself is paid for by the guest's cleaning fee: our own cleaners turn the home after every stay and check it on each visit.
You can follow it all in the owner portal, which shows bookings and income as they come in, and each month a statement shows what the home earned and what it cost.
What stays with the owner
Power, internet, rates, insurance and repairs are yours, as they would be with any rental. Gardening and fit-out sit outside the fee. When something urgent or unsafe needs fixing, we go ahead up to an agreed limit, so a guest is not left waiting while we chase an email. Anything above that limit, or anything that can wait, we ask you about first.
Before you start, check that your insurance covers short-stay letting and your contents. If the home is in a body corporate, its rules need to allow short stays.
You can still use the home yourself. Give us notice and we block out the dates when it is not booked.
Finding out what your home could earn
The appraisal is free and done in person. We look through the home with you and set it against similar homes we manage, set against what it would earn as a long-term rental, so you can compare before you decide. Our homes average 75% occupancy or better, but yours will depend on its size, location and presentation, so the appraisal is for your home, not an average. If short stays are not right for it, we will tell you.
We take 2 to 6 bedroom homes in central Hamilton and Cambridge, furnished or ready to furnish, and 3 and 4 bedroom homes suit us best. To start, fill in the short form on our List your home page or call 020 402 72715. Owners in Cambridge can read about short-stay management in Cambridge.
