Operating notes for people running short-term rentals as a business. Regulation changes, pricing tactics, owner-reporting playbooks, and turnover systems for STR co-hosts and small property managers — no "passive income" hype, just the stuff that keeps clients past year one.
Your supply closet should run on par levels, not on how it looks
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Most supply runs are triggered by a guest message, not by a count. The first "we're out of toilet paper" text is the moment you learn the closet was empty. By then you're buying at retail on a Saturday, and the guest has already decided what kind of host you are. Running out is a systems failure, and a cheap one to fix. Set a par level for every consumable at every unit. Par is the minimum you must have on the shelf after a turnover, written as a number. For a unit that sleeps four, something like 6 toilet paper rolls, 4 trash bags, 2 hand soap refills, 2 packs of dish pods, and one spare of each coffee supply is a reasonable first draft. Adjust it after a month of real data. The point is that "enough" stops being a feeling. Make the cleaner's checkout the count, not a separate trip. Your cleaner is already standing in the closet. Give them a one-page checklist or a shared sheet with the par numbers, and have them flag anything below par before they leave. That adds a couple of minutes to a turnover and removes the extra visit you'd otherwise make just to look. Pay for those minutes if you have to. It's still cheaper than the trip. Buy against the par, and keep one sealed reserve box. Once the count is a number, you can order a month at a time instead of panic-buying. Keep one full restock of the basics in your car or a storage unit, so a missed count never becomes a missed-supply guest. Track the monthly supply cost per unit and put it in the owner report as a line item, so supplies are a known number and never a surprise charge. Review the pars quarterly, using what actually ran out. If a unit hits below-par every other turn, raise its number. If a shelf item hasn't moved in 90 days, cut it. Ten minutes a quarter keeps the list honest, and it gives you a clean answer when an owner asks why supplies cost what they do: here's the list, here's the count, here's the spend. This week, pick your busiest unit and write its par list before the next checkout. |
The Co-Host Brief
Operating notes for people running short-term rentals as a business. Regulation changes, pricing tactics, owner-reporting playbooks, and turnover systems for STR co-hosts and small property managers — no "passive income" hype, just the stuff that keeps clients past year one.
Most co-hosts set a rate floor by checking what the unit next door charges, and that tells you nothing about whether you make money. Your neighbor may have a paid-off mortgage, a cleaner who charges half what yours does, or no management fee to split. The only floor that protects you is built from what it costs you to host one stay. Add up what one turnover costs before the guest sleeps a single night. Take the cleaning fee you pay, the laundry, the restocked supplies, and any per-stay charge...
A permit that lapses by a day can cost an owner more than a bad week of pricing. Whatever your market requires, whether a license, a registration or a tax account, it has a date attached, and when it lapses the listing may have to come down until it is sorted out. Nobody notices a renewal date until it has passed. Across ten units that is ten permit dates plus the tax filings behind them, and you are usually the only person watching. Build one sheet with one row per unit. Columns: city or...
Most co-hosts set the cleaning fee in week one and let it drift away from what a turnover actually costs. Your cleaner raises the rate by $10, laundry moves to a service, soap and coffee get pricier, and the fee guests pay stays exactly where you typed it on day one. Run that across eight units for a year and the gap has to come out of somebody's margin. It's usually the owner's, and they find it at the annual review. Build the fee from the real cost of a turnover, not from the listing next...