Responsible Hosting

Responsible Hosting

          I have owned vacation homes since 1986.  That is 33 years.  Over that time, I have owned vacation homes in the Berkshires (2), The Hamptons, Park City (5), San Diego and Ithaca.  By my count, that is a total of ten vacation homes.  At one time, I have owned as many as three at once (what a headache).  The big issue is always how to maintain the home in my absence.  By definition, I am not there more than I am there, so I need someone to care for the place and make sure it is clean and ready when I want to use it.  There is nothing quite like arriving at a vacation home and finding that you have four hours of cleaning and maintenance to do before you can relax for the stay.  It takes a decided bite out of an otherwise pleasant weekend.  So, as you might imagine, I always figure on what it will cost to keep the place in the manner that works for me when I calculate the economics of ownership.

           When I watch HGTV and see people selecting and deciding on buying vacation homes, I see many of them discussing the rental economics of second home ownership.  The world is filled with shrewd people who can only afford a vacation home if they can offset a large part of the cost of carry by renting the home while they are not using it.  I know people who figure out homes that will rent in high season for more than it costs to carry the home for the rest of the year.  They pride themselves at having nine months of free living in the vacation home and usually declare that they prefer the low-season at that location anyway.  What they rarely bother to discuss is the hassle of renting the property, the hassle maintaining the property and cost of keeping the property at some acceptable standard of care.

          This has all gone from an issue that affects only a few hearty and aggressive souls that take on the work of being a remote landlord, to a ubiquitous issue that everyone gets the pleasure of joining in on.  Thank you, Airbnb and Vrbo.  Now, everyone with a spare bedroom, apartment, guest house, vacation home or shed can post it on offer online and generate added income.  But whenever markets like this pop up, rules start to sprout around it like mushrooms.  There needs to be a rating system so that good properties can be recognized by renters and owners can determine if they are renting to good renters. 

          I have always maintained a policy that I will lend my vacation homes to friends and family, but I do not want to rent them out to unknown parties.  This personal policy is driven mostly by convenience.  I wanted total flexibility to use my vacation home whenever I want (or some family member wants).  I also do not like the concept of my personal space being invaded by unknown and generally unsupervised renters.  Having people look in my underwear drawer is less the issue than the fact that I have many precious mementos and memorabilia in these vacation homes, and I don’t want them to go mysteriously missing.  And then there is the issue of the expanded maintenance and cleaning responsibilities.  It has always all led to renting my vacation home being a non-starter.

          When I have lent my vacation homes to friends that are less than close friends, I have usually had good luck, but even with that loose connection, I have had a few incidents with people treating the place like a party-central Spring Break motel room.  I have had neighbors complain about rowdy inhabitants.  I have even found everything from nicks to smashed furniture.  I don’t know that anything has ever gone missing from theft, but I suspect that my liquor cabinet has been depleted by inhabitants that drink more aggressively than I do.  Of course, there are also wonderful guests who leave lovely gifts or bottles of wine and treat my home as though it was their own.  It’s just that those are the exception rather than the norm.

          I am very uncertain that I like being rated by people I lend or rent my home to.  I don’t even care to rate them.  Hell, I don’t even like rating and getting rated by Uber as a valued rider. But when you lend you can do as you please, but if you want into the global networks of Airbnb or Vrbo, you need to play by their rules and agree to ratings in both directions.

          Recently, my cousins, who have very nicely managed my home in Ithaca for almost twenty years, have built out an apartment in their home and decided to add to their income stream by that means.  They already own a building downtown that has rental apartments, so acting as a landlord comes naturally to them.  Moving from term rentals to overnight guests via Airbnb must be a change that requires adjustment, but it seems within reach to them.  While they were at it, they wondered aloud why I shouldn’t Airbnb my lovely Ithaca home since I use it less and less.  I spend a lot of money each year to keep this place, and my kids use it occasionally, so I want to keep it for now, so I was open to the suggestion.  I guess I was ready to break with my thirty-three-year policy of not being a vacation home landlord or hotelier.

          Ithaca, as a remote college town, has a brisk demand for rental properties, especially around graduation, orientation, reunion, homecoming and other such times.  By renting the house for use a few weeks of the year, I could cover a lot of my annual nut for carrying the property.  There I go, falling into the false economics trap that lures the novices in. I should know better, but I dove in nonetheless.

          Our first rental during graduation, was fine.  We had a nice Asian family who appreciated the home and gave us four out of five stars due to several minor issues that they had.  Fair enough.  Shake-down cruise.

          We just finished our second rental.  The woman made several pre-arrival requests which we accommodated. Customer service is key in the hospitality game. Then, after the three-day weekend stay, and without any communications of issues during the stay, the woman rattled off a list of complaints about the home ranging from issues of cleanliness, functioning appliances, deck maintenance (splinters) and general disappointment about the home.  This was devastating to both my cousins and me.  We love this home.  They clean and maintain this home.  This suddenly got very personal.  Initially, we decided we needed to make amends, so we offered a 50% discount since they were displeased.  The woman agreed and said she would not file a negative review.  We were rattled but trying to regain our balance to go forward.

          Then the woman, once she had our discount in hand, decided to revisit the issue and requested full reimbursement.  Bam!  Suddenly we went from contrite and embarrassed to mad and victimized.  People are people.  Scammers will be scammers.  Now I feel itchy about them being in my home for three days.  Now I remember why I don’t rent my vacation homes.  We plot a strategy to notify Airbnb of the attempted extortion (Airbnb actually has an extortion policy, it seems, so we aren’t the first victims of this nonsense).  We learn that since we asked them not to give us a bad review for the discount, we are equally off-side on Airbnb policy. Double bam!  Now we are being criminalized by all this.  Despite being an advocate and practitioner of responsible hosting (as Airbnb calls it), I’m out.  I am pulling my Airbnb program and immediately delisting.  We have two renters scheduled for next year, so we agree to keep them in place, but no more.  The fact that Airbnb has the flexibility to do this tells me that we are, again, not the first pioneers to decide all this vacation home rental business is for the birds.