If you have purchased a vacation home that you want to rent out, you may be wondering how you should go about managing the property. You have many choices when it comes to hiring a property manager, but you may want to do it yourself. There are some benefits to both.

Self-Managing a Vacation Rental

If you live near your vacation rental, it may save you both time and money to manage it yourself. This is especially true if you’re not working anywhere else. Here are a few aspects of managing your rental that could be of benefit to do yourself.

Cleaning and Property Maintenance

If you leave this to a property management company, you may not get what you want. You want to offer a clean and well-maintained place for people to stay. No one wants to walk into a vacation rental that is dirty or in disrepair. Your property will need to be cleaned and sanitized, and any repairs made before your next guests. If you have a lot of experience in these areas, it can save you money to do it yourself.

If you have no experience, it’s not a problem: simply interview as many cleaning and maintenance contractors as you can and hire them! Even if you do have maintenance experience, this can help save you time so you can spend the hours necessary to get your property booked.

Accepting Reservations

You will be working hard to make sure your rental is occupied as much as possible, so sometimes you may want to run a special deal. You also want to make sure that you choose renters that are high quality. So it will pay for you to advertise, post on social media, and get the word out by any outlet possible.

You may even want to set up and maintain a website so people can book directly. Do it yourself, and you will have control over how the website looks, the photos you post, and the descriptions you write. Those are all critical to getting maximum occupancy.

So You Did All That: Now What?

Now your phone is ringing, you’re getting emails, and people are booking your property on your new website. This is excellent news!

But you will need to make sure you communicate with them promptly and make check-in and check-out as smooth as possible. You must also respond to any complaints or other needs immediately. When they are gone, get the cleaners in quickly.

The most significant benefit to doing all this yourself is that you control what happens at your property. You won’t be wondering if it’s being taken care of every time a guest checks in or out!