We bought a 1 bedroom condo 100 yards off lake back in January. Updated it with new flooring and some other improvements, had it on the market since mid April as a nightly rental. It sat empty 2 nights for the month of June and a handful of nights in May.
As of now, we use a management company that takes 10%. They put the listing out on their website and all the popular websites (air bnb, vrbo, etc). The nightly rates fluctuate based on time of year, day of week, room availability in the area, and how close it is to the date of rental. Rates vary from $70/night to $250/night. Talking to the guy with one right next to us who manages it on his own using a set flat rate per night, we have already made several more thousand dollars than him even paying the 10%.
We pay the cleaning fee directly, but the management company tells the cleaning company when to do the cleaning. We also pay the cleaning company a bit more to be the 'local' contact. Last night she had to go put some batteries in the wifi front door lock because they were nearly dead.
In 2 1/2 months of being on the market, the only issue we had was some crying Karen saying the place smelled of cigarette smoke, the towels were smokey, the bedding was smokey, and the place was terrible. All was a lie, all was a tactic to get a free night out of it. The issue was never raised until check out time. The manager of the cleaning company said there was zero odor of smoke in any of it. I'm not sure what my wife ended up doing, whether she gave a free night, or told them to tell her to go jump in the lake. Other than that, it has been totally hands off so far.
Just bought another 1 bedroom condo, this one right on the lake, and hopefully a few months success with the other one will be indicative of the future as we watch the economy tank and vacation spending come to a screeching hault....
