When searching for the best Airbnb management company, there are certain factors and signs that you should look for - both green flags and red flags. You can identify some of these positive and negative indicators on the company website and during a call with the team, but online reviews by hosts and guests are one of the best places to find out what an Airbnb manager does and does not do well.
Looking for a top-ranked, full-service vacation rental management company that offers more personalization and flexibility than anyone else in the US market? Check out Checkmate Rentals. Unlike competitors, we co-host properties with you so that you own your listings and keep your 5-star reviews forever. Our fees start at only 15% of revenue for end-to-end management.
Find the Best Airbnb Management Company: 12 Point Guide
Choosing the right property manager for your short-term rental property is of crucial importance for the success of your business. You want to find a team that will take good care of your property over the long term, who will provide everything that your guests need, and who will be able to generate more revenue than you do on your own, without charging unreasonable fees that bring overall profit down.
That’s why, in your search for the best Airbnb management company, you should focus on the following criteria:
1. Airbnb Management Model
When reviewing different Airbnb managers, the first point to note is the property management type in which they engage. There are two main types of STR management:
1) Full-service which covers all tasks required to rent out a property on a short-term basis and
2) Half-service which focuses on the automation of the most tedious activities, such as marketing and communication, with the use of technology.
Based on your availability, expertise, skills, and proximity to your investment property, you need to choose the better-fitting model for your personal situation and needs. With full-service management, you gain access to passive income and can focus on expanding your portfolio, while giving up lots of control over your Airbnb business. With half-service property management, you remain personally involved in all business decisions, but you have to dedicate a lot of time and effort to your property.
2. Range of Available Airbnb Property Management Services
The second factor to consider in your Airbnb management company reviews is the services that the manager offers. The vacation rental management industry is as diverse as it gets, with each company providing slightly different services.
While there is a relatively standard suite of services offered by most Airbnb managers, there are major variations in things like interior design, furnishing, short-term rental licenses and permits assistance, tax help, photography, insurance, and others.
So, you need to understand the exact tasks that a company can take charge of when exploring options in your market. Focus on property managers that do the work that you and your rental need.
3. Flexibility and Customization of Services
Ideally, you want to find a manager who is able to personalize the services to the needs of your property and your preferences instead of offering a one-size-fit-all model. Each property requires a unique portfolio of services based on its type, number of rooms, outdoor space, amenities, market trends, and target guest requirements.
It’s also important to know which services are included in the standard package covered by the monthly property management fee and which are extra so they need to be paid separately.
4. Market Coverage
In your Airbnb management company review, you should check out which locations the company operates in. There are two main types of Airbnb property managers in terms of market coverage: 1) National companies that work with STRs across the entire US market and 2) Local property managers that focus on a single city or a few neighboring locations.
Nationwide Airbnb property management companies benefit from corporate supervision and adherence to standards, but they offer less custom services and less personal attention to each property and owner. In many cases, the quality of services varies widely from one market to another, depending on the composition of the local team. Meanwhile, local Airbnb managers lack economies of scale and access to industry discounts, but they take more ownership and pay more attention to each individual home and stay.
You should choose the model that better fits your own style and preferences. If you own a number of short-term rentals in a few markets, it might be worth considering a company that can manage all of them so that you take advantage of discounted rates.
5. Portfolio Size
Some vacation rental property managers, such as Vacasa and Evolve, work with thousands of properties across the US, while others have significantly smaller portfolios of a few dozen properties. Each comes with its own pros and cons.
Companies with larger portfolios have more experience and often provide discounts to different services and supplies, but sometimes they stretch too thin, so the quality of their work goes down. At the same time, smaller companies usually put more effort into the management process to build their reputation and expand their portfolio, but their team might be inexperienced and they might not have access to vendor networks.
Once again, this is an important consideration to take into account in your review and choose the one that you prefer.
6. Airbnb Management Fee Structure and Range
Needless to say, how much an Airbnb manager charges is one of the key factors to consider when reviewing them. Half-service Airbnb management fees typically range between 10% and 15% of monthly revenue, while full-service managers charge 25%-40% of income. In addition, many firms ask for additional fees for services such as smart home management, linen provision, and insurance.
So, in your review of different Airbnb management companies, make sure to compare their standard monthly fees as well as all additional charges. This will help you choose a property manager that offers good value for money.
7. Company Business Model
Another important factor that determines how good a short-term rental management company is is the business model which it follows. Is it a single company that operates via in-house teams across different markets? Or does the company work through franchises to cover various locations?
Before choosing a particular company to manage your vacation rental, you need to be familiar with the exact team that will work with your property and understand how they guarantee results.
8. Use of Technology
The best STR property managers use the latest technology to optimize their Airbnb pricing strategy, marketing efforts, communication with guests, and reporting to owners, which helps them save time while keeping costs at bay. At the same time though, they don’t forget about the importance of human touch and human intervention in the hospitality industry.
When interviewing Airbnb managers, ask them about the ways in which they use technology in their work and what technology they work with. Make sure that they select software that is reliable and that they don’t over-rely on technology.
9. Company History and Team
In your review of the company website or LinkedIn profile, before you even talk to them in person, check when the company was established, who the founders and the leadership are, and what the company mission is. This information can tell you a lot about the team motivation, experience, and expertise in the vacation rental management industry in general as well as in your specific market.
Usually, the top Airbnb management companies are started by hosts themselves who intimately understand the constraints in the industry and mean to help fix them through personalized, quality services to hosts and guests.
10. Airbnb Management Company Rankings and Customer Reviews
In your research, you should definitely check the Airbnb management company reviews on third-party websites, such as Trustpilot, BBB, and Yelp. First of all, make sure that the company has an average ranking of at least 4 stars as anything below this is rather suspicious and speaks of various potential problems.
Next, read through individual reviews written by owners and guests and see what both parties say about their experiences with the property manager. While a company can promise you the world on their website, they might fail to provide basic services in reality. Customer reviews are guaranteed to reveal any shortcomings in operations and results.
11. Airbnb Management Terms and Conditions
In addition, you should review the property management agreement when studying a company. Review the list of services that the company is expected to deliver and the fees that it will charge in exchange. Moreover, understand the onboarding process and the cancellation policy. The best Airbnb managers have flexible cancellation policies and no long-term contracts as they try to retain clients by providing superior services rather than by tying them with strict contractual terms.
12. Airbnb Listing Performance
The final stop in your Airbnb management company review should be the actual listings operated by them. If you can’t identify their listings in your local market, ask them to share a few with you.
Once you have access to their rentals, check out the actual listings and whether all Airbnb SEO requirements are met. Look at the overall ratings of the listings and the number of guest reviews on which they are based. Finally, pay attention to what guests say about the properties and the services that they received during their stays, especially in their negative reviews. Guest reviews are one of the best ways to evaluate how reliable a company is and how well it would manage your property.
Reviewing an Airbnb manager based on these 12 criteria should give you a very clear idea of the kind of cooperation you can expect with them. Most importantly, make sure that you opt for a company with flexible cancellation policies so that you can easily leave in case you are not 100% satisfied with the work they do.
What to Pay Attention to in Airbnb Management Reviews by Hosts and Guests
Customer reviews by owners and guests on trustworthy, third-party websites are a major part of researching Airbnb management companies. Most customers are - brutally - honest in their reviews and share personal experiences and impressions which you cannot obtain in any other way, at least not in such an easy and convenient manner.
When combing through the reviews written by hosts and guests, you should pay attention to both the positives and the negatives that they have to say about the company. And take both with a grain of salt. Positive reviews that praise the qualities of certain team members are usually requested by the company, so they might not provide useful information about the overall quality of services. Having said that, customers naturally tend to resort to writing reviews when they are frustrated rather than whey they are impressed, so there is likely to be a disproportionate number of poor reviews even if the company does a good job in managing Airbnbs.
In any case, here are the main points to take into consideration when checking Airbnb management companies reviews on third-party websites:
Green Flags in Airbnb Management Company Reviews
First, let’s start with the positions. If owners and guests highlight the following experiences, a company is likely to be a good option for managing a short-term rental property:
1. No 1-Star Reviews
While earning only 5-star reviews is virtually impossible, having zero 1-star or 2-star reviews is a strong indication of the good job that an Airbnb manager does in meeting both owner and guest expectations. So, after checking the average rating of a company, investigate whether there are any really negative reviews.
2. Clean, Well-Maintained Properties
If guests consistently praise how well prepared and how spotless the homes are, that’s definitely a big green flag. After all, impeccable hygiene practices is one of the must-haves in hospitality. Guests are guaranteed to punish the hosts/property managers of filthy properties with 1-star reviews and ruin their business in the long run.
3. Revenue Improvement
The best Airbnb property management companies can bring considerable income boosts to owners, and satisfied hosts are sure to reflect this in their positive reviews. So, keep an eye for specific numbers when checking reviews. This is the ultimate proof that the manager does what they were hired to do, namely help you earn passive income from your real estate investment.
4. Expertise Across Different Markets
When reviewing customer feedback, make sure that experiences are consistent across different markets, especially if you are considering a larger-scale company. Big property managers tend to provide services with fluctuating quality across locations, and the opposite is a strong signal that you might actually be dealing with a great company.
5. Quick Communication
Another thing to look for in reviews is how efficient communication is. The best vacation rental management companies have representatives who are available to respond to both hosts and guests 24/7. This is something that happy customers frequently comment on in their reviews.
6. Personally Engaged Team Members
Yet another green flag is positive feedback on the work done by individual employees. This indicates that the leadership takes the time and puts the effort into vetting and hiring team members who are personally involved in the care for properties, hosts, and guests. After all, a company is only as strong as the sum of its individual employees.
Red Flags in Airbnb Management Company Reviews
While positive reviews of Airbnb property managers tend to resemble each other, negative reviews can be strikingly different, highlighting dozens of things that could have gone wrong. The most important red flags to pay attention to include:
1. Limited Online Presence and a Small Number of Reviews
First of all, if a company is not available on many review websites and has only a few reviews on the websites where it is present, that already says a lot about them. Unless you are researching a relatively new property manager with local presence, you should expect them to have at least a few hundred reviews on a number of different websites.
2. Mix of Extremely Positive and Extremely Negative Reviews
It’s a good idea to avoid property managers that have many 5-star reviews but also numerous 1-star or 2-star reviews. This indicates inability to maintain quality over time or over different markets. While a few 3-star reviews are natural (there is no way to meet the expectations of absolutely everyone no matter how good you are), multiple 1-star and 2-star reviews mean you better stay away from this Airbnb manager.
3. Inconsistent Quality Across Markets
As mentioned above, national Airbnb management companies sometimes generate positive reviews in some markets and negative reviews in other markets. This means that the property manager pays more attention to certain locations, while it falls behind in others. This shows lack of care for all customers.
4. Poor Property Care and Maintenance
Needless to say, it’s a big No-No if customer reviews mention spaces that have not been properly maintained in the long term or adequately cleaned between stays. Providing flawless cleaning services is at the core of hospitality.
5. Low Daily Rates
If owners report unreasonably low nightly prices set up by the property manager, this means that they are likely not going to optimize the performance of your rental. Some short-term rental management companies reduce daily rates below market averages to boost occupancy, which doesn’t necessarily lead to maximum revenue.
6. Last-Minute Cancellations to Guests
If you see a lot of guests complaining about last-minute cancellations of reservations, it’s better to skip on this company. First of all, this will build a negative reputation of the property manager and make guests not book with them in the future. Second, canceling bookings at the very last moment means that your property remains vacant when it could be generating income, in addition to showing poor planning and booking calendar management on behalf of the property manager.
7. Difficult Airbnb Management Contract Cancellation Policies
Frequently, property owners highlight how difficult it is to cancel the property management agreement in their negative reviews of companies. Stay away from property managers that try to bind you with limiting terms.
8. Slow or Unavailable Communication
Last but not least, opt out of choosing a company that is reported to ignore communication, whether from owners or guests. Timely, comprehensive, and even proactive communication is one of the pillars of good property management.
There are different things that owners and guests can praise or complain about in their positive and negative reviews of Airbnb management companies. But the green and red flags above summarize the most frequent indicators that a property manager is likely to do a good or a bad job, respectively.
6 Steps to Identify a Reliable Airbnb Property Management Company
While selecting the best short-term rental property manager in your market is a complex process that requires a number of considerations, it can be largely streamlined by going through these 6 steps:
1. Research Available Options Online
The first step in finding the right company for your vacation rental needs is to search the internet for a few different property managers that operate in your market. You can do that by simply googling the best Airbnb management companies in the respective market or by checking reputable websites that provide lists of the top Airbnb managers in different locations.
Once you have a few names in mind, you should review their websites to find out the company history and team, the business model, the available services, and the fees. There is a lot that you can learn about a manager on their website, but it is not enough to make up your mind.
2. Check Out Airbnb Management Reviews and Rankings
The second step is to google the company and look for online reviews on third-party websites. Testimonials on the company website are not reliable as they are handpicked to highlight the positive sides of the Airbnb manager and hide any customer complaints.
When looking at reviews by owners and guests, keep an eye for all green and red flags listed above.
3. Talk to Local Airbnb Hosts
Another important step of your research is to try to connect with STR investors in your area and ask for their experiences with different firms. Hosts are usually happy to share their honest thoughts with fellow investors. This will give you an opportunity to also ask questions about any aspects that are not mentioned in online reviews of the company.
4. Thoroughly Interview the Airbnb Management Company
Next, once you’ve gathered some information about the company and it seems like it might be a good fit for your needs, it’s time to schedule a phone or in-person interview with the team. It’s a big red flag if the property manager refuses to allocate enough time to discuss your property, its unique needs, and all your concerns.
During the interview, you should ask all questions you have about the company, the team, the process, the fees, and everything else. You can learn a lot about a property manager just based on how they behave during the call and how willing they are to share detailed information with you.
5. Ask to Be Connected with Clients
The ultimate test in the review of an Airbnb management company is whether it is willing to put you in touch with some clients it’s worked with, with their permission of course. If they do this, it means that they are comfortable with the level and quality of services they provide to customers and have nothing to hide. However, if they don’t want to let you talk to other owners, they probably are trying to hide some negative experiences.
6. Review the Airbnb Management Agreement
Finally, when reviewing an Airbnb manager, make sure to have a look at the vacation rental management contract that you will have to sign. Check out all details that we mentioned before, making sure that there are no red flags. With so many options out there, it doesn’t make sense to hire a company that will try to keep you even when things are obviously going down hill.
Bottom Line
Finding the right property manager is a demanding process, but it is definitely much more manageable when you know what to look for. When going through Airbnb management company reviews, you should pay attention to both overall ratings and individual reviews by owners and guests. You should be on the lookout for green and red flags and search for patterns in customer feedback.
Meanwhile, if you’re on the search for top-quality, full-service short-term rental management that is customized to your property and your preferences, check out Checkmate Rentals. We provide comprehensive management while co-hosting properties with you so that you own your listings forever. Our fees start at only 15% of booking revenue.
