Airbnb Property Managers: Should You Hire One For Your Rental?

Hiring an Airbnb property manager can be very beneficial to hosts and property owners who don't have the time to run their vacation rental business. It's like having a partner to rely on who can help you optimize and run your Airbnb.

Our team of Superhosts here at BNBCalc personally manage our rentals, and while it's a demanding gig, we make it work. However, it's not the ideal route for everyone. We understand that each owner has different needs and constraints, which is where property managers can help.

So, today, we'll be exploring Airbnb property management and their services to aid you in figuring out if you need one or not.

Understanding Airbnb Property Management

Airbnb property management is simple, it's just a professional who takes over your rental and manages it for you. They oversee your daily operations and help you optimize your short-term rental properties.

You can expect property managers and companies to perform the following duties for your rental:

• Creating and optimizing property listings
• Implementing dynamic pricing strategies
• Managing guest communications
• Coordinating bookings and reservations
• Handling check-ins and check-outs
• Ensuring property cleanliness and maintenance
• Responding to guest inquiries
• Managing online reviews
• Complying with local regulations

We've found that local professionals can typically be cheaper and be more hands-on with your rental. On the other hand, Airbnb management companies charge fees that are a bit higher but can have more advanced tools for optimization and can typically handle a larger number of STRs.

If you prefer a more hands-on approach like us, one can argue that property management software can be the biggest help you can get. Property management software like Hospitable, Hostfully, and Hostify can make your life easier by automating and streamlining your daily tasks.

While it's not as easy as hiring a professional to do the work for you, you still retain full control over your property and makes managing an Airbnb property simpler. We personally use Hospitable and Guesty as our main vacation rental software.

What Services Do Airbnb Property Managers Offer?

From our experience, their duties can range from optimizing your listing to effectively managing cleaning and maintenance. They can even include services like financial and channel management, and you can request more or less services depending on the level of service you require and what responsibilities you want them to handle.

Typical property managers and property management companies offer:

• Listing Optimization
• Pricing Strategy
• Revenue management (optimizing your calendar for maximum revenue)
• Guest Communication and Management
• Management of Cleaning Services and Maintenance
• Local Laws and Regulations Compliance

This shortlist can be more or less what you can expect a professional to do when you hire them. We highly recommend communicating your needs and providing them with all of the information they need to succeed. If you make their job easier, they'll save time and ensure that you maximize your rental income.

Evaluating Your Needs as an Airbnb Host

One of the most common mistakes most hosts and owners make is to instantly start looking for the top professional managers and companies within their area. However, we've learned the hard way that this isn't the way to go.

First, you'll have to look internally to determine your needs as a host, your goals, and what services you require. The decision to hire an Airbnb manager shouldn't come down to who's the most experienced and skilled. Instead, to hire the best, you need to look for a company or professional that fits your needs and aligns with your goals.

There are many Airbnb property management companies and professionals out there, but not all of them can meet your vacation rental management demands.

What Are Your Goals as an Airbnb Host?

As we've mentioned, before looking outward for rental property management assistance, take a minute or two to think long and hard about your goals as a short-term rental host. You might even want to grab a pen and paper to list them down.

Speaking from experience, we know how easy it can be to forget about the metrics and long-term goals, and instead focus on surviving your daily tasks and responsibilities. However, identifying and setting targets for your rental is an important thing for both the growth of your business and the effectiveness of your professional management team.

The goals you should be looking at can include financial goals, performance metrics, investment timelines, and more. Here are a couple of questions that we asked ourselves when we were first identifying our STR goals.

• How much should the target monthly earnings be to break even?
• How does my occupancy rate compare to nearby rentals?
• How does my average nightly rate compare to nearby properties?
• Am I delivering an excellent guest experience? Does it reflect in the guest reviews?
• Are my booking conversion rates good?
• Is my listing/s appearing in searches?
• What is my response rate? What should it be?

These are all essential questions that will enable you to set realistic goals that you and your chosen property manager can strive for.

Pro Tip: You can run a property analysis for your rental on BNBCalc and find nearby comps, help you compute your expenses, play around with different occupancy rates and ADRs, and more. This can help you answer your questions quickly and effectively.

How Much Time Can You Dedicate to Managing Your Property?

One of the most important questions you can reflect on is deciding how much time you can or want to dedicate to managing your Airbnb. Take note, the time you CAN and WANT to dedicate are two vastly different things. You can theoretically put all of your time and effort into running your business, but do you want to? I highly doubt it. No one wants to work 24/7. We all need to rest at some point.

So, how much time are you willing to dedicate to managing your property? Is the time you dedicate enough to properly run the business? Can you keep up with all of your vacation rental properties? These are some of the questions you'll have to answer to determine the extent of the services you're looking for. It's something we really can't help you with because it has to come from your own willingness and capabilities.

Balancing the demands of the vacation rental industry can feel like a full-time job at times, but you don’t have to do it alone. This is where hiring an Airbnb property manager’s services can come in. It frees up your time while giving you peace of mind that your business is in the right hands.

Making the Decision: Do You Really Need a Property Manager?

Now, it's time for the biggest question; do you really need a property manager for your property? This is for sure a tough question to answer, so, let's go through a couple of things that can help you with your inevitable choice.

What Factors Should Influence Your Decision?

The factors that play into whether you should go out and hire a professional for your business will vary. It depends on what you value the most and the specific needs of your STR. However, we've collected a list of elements that can help you determine which path you should take moving forward.

• Time Availability: This is probably the biggest factor that you should consider. Do you have enough time to run the business? Is it your full-time job? Can you still handle the day-to-day responsibilities? These are just some of the questions you should start asking yourself.
• Number of Properties You Own: As you scale your business, it gets harder and harder to manage it on your own. A handful of properties is probably still doable, once you get to around 5 properties it starts to get harder, 10 or more and it starts to get overwhelming. Of course, automation tools and other STR-focused software can help. However, these can only save you a bit of time. Sometimes you just have to give in and hire additional professional help.
• Revenue Optimization: Another thing the expertise of professional management brings is revenue optimization. You may be aware of how to properly optimize your rates to get the maximum value out of your bookings. The professionals can come up with pricing strategies and help you utilize dynamic pricing tools to help your rental bring in more revenue. These things can take some time to learn, especially when you’re new to the industry.
• Costs Involved: Typically, property management companies charge you about 20-40% of your rent income. Professional property managers may charge a bit less at around 10-30%. You can also find some pros in the Airbnb Co-Host Marketplace, for around the same rates. These aren't exactly low fees and quickly eat into your profit margins if you're not careful. Remember, these often require signing a contract, so you'll be locked into giving up a percentage of the rental income, whether you like it or not.
• Location: Depending on where you live and where your rental is located, it can be a challenge to keep up and regularly monitor your STR. It's not a problem that many owners struggle with, since most live nearby. However, in cases where you live a couple of hours away, maybe a city away, that's when it can get a bit taxing. In some cases, you might be better off getting a co-host instead of a property manager.

What Are the Signs That You Might Need a Property Manager?

We're workaholics here at BNBCalc, but we also know our limits and know when it's time to have some fun. We think that one of the major signs of when you should start to seek vacation management help is when you notice that you're slowly getting too deep into your work.

Pay attention to when you're starting to get overwhelmed by the number of daily tasks you need to do, when you're losing time to spend with family and friends, and when you're feeling way too tired at the end of the day. Once every day starts to feel like a long day, that's pretty much the biggest go signal you can get.

Another great indicator is when you're not meeting your goals and your business performance is starting to stagnate, if not decline. Aside from the full-service management package, hiring a property manager also brings in a fresh set of expertise and ideas that can help improve your Airbnb rental. It might just be the push you needed to take your business to new heights.

To help you get a better understanding of how much the property management fees can affect your bottom line. Here’s a quick breakdown of the operating expenses with a property manager charging a rate of 15% of rental income, brought to you by the BNBCalc property analysis tool:

Here’s the same operational expenses computation for the same rental but now without a property manager:

We can see how much the fees can eat up your expenses, however, if the property’s performance improves along with the hiring of a new manager, then it can also quickly offset the overall costs.

Conclusion: Making an Informed Choice

If you ask us, doing a cost-benefit analysis is the best way to go about it. Find out what Airbnb property managers charge along with all of the property management fees and deduct them from your estimated earnings. Compare those values to what you would typically earn if you did everything yourself. Once you've narrowed down your options and factored in your time and effort into the equation, then you can start to see the pros and cons of hiring a property manager.

Hopefully, we were able to provide you with everything you need to know about Airbnb property management and left you well-equipped to make an informed decision on whether you could benefit from one.