Handling Monthly Rental Queries

 Our Airbnbs are in an area close to a large industrial construction project, which draws labor crews for contracts that may be weeks or months in length. These folks often find our Airbnbs an attractive alternative to hotels.

They appreciate the home-like environment, and can be economical compared to hotels when the cost is split among individuals. They also like the additional privacy they gain in everyone having their own bedroom, compared to sharing a two-bed hotel room with a coworker.

We generally appreciate these folks as guests. They tend to hit the job very early, come back mid-afternoon, cook dinner, and fall into bed. And lots of these folks become repeat guests after they've had a first successful weekend with us. We've had a few hiccups with muddy boots being worn in the house, but emphasizing a house rule around that tends to solve it.

Recently we've been fielding a lot of questions around longer-term stays - multiple months at a time. This has turned a little thorny for a number of reasons. First, their expectation seems to be that a furnished rental will be priced just a little more than an unfurnished rental, i.e., if an unfurnished house is $1,500/mo, surely a furnished one will be something like $1,900?

They fail to understand that we're probably not gonna have them connect their own utilities, so electricity, gas, water, trash, and internet all need to be built into the price. And guests just use more of most of these utilities than a renter would if they're in their own home. Plus there's additional wear-and-tear due to having the house 100% occupied for months on end. The result is the rate would need to be WAY higher than they're expecting.

And another key concern is that depending on your state, stays of longer than 28 days are legally considered long-term rentals, and thus could subject the owner to a lengthy eviction process should the guests stop paying.

For us, our strategy is to field these requests by explaining a little about our underlying costs, and then give them an honest monthly quote building in all these factors and enough padding to absorb some risk. This includes:

1. The monthly rate (and this is probably gonna make their eyes pop, as it's likely a multiple of what they were expecting)
2. Fees to cover a deep-clean at the end of the stay and legal costs associated with having a lawyer draft a long-term rental contract
3. A reasonable deposit, refundable at the end of the stay less any damages
4. Total cash due at signing - first & last month's rent, fees, and deposit. Again, this will probably make their head spin, but put it out there.
5. Any special requirements for a long stay. For example, one of the houses we get queries on is my personal home, and I work in my home office upstairs between guest stays. I don't want to lose access to my office during a multi-month stay, so I need to be able to still use it. Again, just put it out there.

In short, ask for what you ACTUALLY need in order to seriously consider this. We haven't had anyone take us up on this yet, but it's not something we actively want to pivot our STR business toward anyway. And if someone does want to pay those numbers and can come with the move-in cash required, well, we're all ears!

How have you handled queries about longer-term stays?

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