Business | The property manager to-do list

POV: you are a property manager and people only ask about how much you earned.

Reality: if only they could imagine the amount of work behind the scenes.

We have successfully hosted over 600 clients in less than 5 years. And when you have customers from all over the world, your business needs to run 24/7, even when you are on an airplane or on a cruise ship with little network. Yes, that happened to us!

You have to be responsive and on top of many things everyday so that operations run smoothly and your guests have an amazing experience.

That is why we do not recommend getting into self-property management if:

• Wanting the property as an investment only - if you only want the money with no hassle, get a property manager
• Juggling property management with a full-time job - especially one where you don't have flexibility
• Physically unable to do the work - if you cannot do it, hire a team or providers
• No desire to deal with tenants - you must love interacting with people and understand their needs
• Not updating yourself constantly - from a legal standpoint (as short term rentals are constantly on the line of fire because of housing crisis), learning from constructive feedback, you always need to innovate and bring new solutions to your clients.

What you need to be doing thoroughly (yourself, someone you hire or via automation ideally):

• Check clients messages - people have questions after they book, before arrival, during their stay. You need to be responsive, not only because platforms give you a tight SLA, but you do not want people who trusted you with a part of their relaxing time to feel that you have failed them
• Onboard new bookings - welcome people who just scouted the internet for hours or days, sent and resent links and bookmarks to their travel companions before taking their credit cards and hitting the CONFIRM BOOKING button. We need to celebrate each and everyone of them. Or you can just have an automation do it for you (which we don't)(yet)
• Confirm calendar sync - unless you are only dealing with direct bookings, you might be using several platforms like VRBO, Expedia, Booking.com and most importantly, Airbnb. Calendar sync is automated when you link the platforms but I always check, because you never know and can you imagine having to deal with a double booking?
• Issue invoices and pay bills - as we are a company and not a couple just trying to make some money on the side (no offence if you are in this case!), we have to legally issue invoices after every stay and also we have monthly bills and taxes to attend to, such as electricity, water, maintenance, accounting and cleaning.
• Be on top of maintenance - the more your units are booked, the more they are utilised, that goes without saying. But that also means that you need to pay attention to details such as leaks, cracks, walls to repaint. We take the opportunity in between bookings or in lower seasons to revamp our properties. We are mostly appreciative of guests who let us know if something needs improving, as some things might escape us and the people who handle the cleaning.

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