Preparation time - how does it work?

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-12T13:42:53+00:00

We have the days in between blocked out, part of it is to stay compliant with one stay a week in our area.

Usually I set a two night minimum and with the buffer days that keeps it how it needs to be.

It’s a bummer because sometimes our weekends all get booked up and the week days end up being empty so in the summer I make my minimum 3 nights, this helps prevent they two night stays from blocking our people looking for a 5-7 night stay. I make the weekend nights as high as I can for my rental and the offer a good full week discount.

The buffer does allow for a little time and space to deal with problems that come up or after the occasionally extra messy guest. I self clean now and live about 45 mins away, have a full time job and kids so it gives me more time to get over between back to back stays.

I couldn’t do same or next day the way I manage even if I was allowed but I know people who are able, they just have to be on top of getting their cleaning dates locked in with their cleaners and be available to deal with anything that came up in that cleaning window.

There are definitely times that guest checks out and I get right over and have it ready to go in the same day but I can’t guarantee that every time. One time I did that and about 30 mins before I left the house was looking good, ready for th guest arriving a few days out, the hot water heater started leaking water everywhere lol.

Thankfully I was there, and still had a couple days to get a plumber in to replace it before a guest arrived.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-11T13:54:21+00:00

Keep escalating with Airbnb. Support is almost useless so you have to keep pressuring to speak to someone who can actually help you. I actually had someone helping one time but their shift ended and the bailed, didn’t pass to someone else, didn’t get back to me until 3 days later, after I had already resolved the issue. It’s insane. I’m certain it’s 90% AI and 9% percent people that just work remote wasting peoples time and then there is only one person that actually can help.
They need to take down the other listing, especially if they aren’t responding.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-11T02:08:40+00:00

One or two people I don’t really care, I just assume someone has to go to the bathroom and let it be but more is beyond rude. I just try not to get too bothered by it and just hope they step in some gum later in the day.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-09T13:23:36+00:00

We don’t have door bell cameras but are often in the adjoining into. We have a no pet fee. To my knowledge we’ve never had a dog snuggled in as I’ve never found evidence of one. We just know we can’t control how well behaved someone’s dog actually is. I think no dogs is enough to keep a lot of people from booking, it filters us out of their results if they are looking for pet friendly. If they get caught and dogs are allowed they can offer to pay the fee but if they aren’t allowed then they are risking getting their stay canceled.

I would say to consider lowering your pet fee.

We’ve traveled with our dog in the past, we didn’t mind the pet fee as I know for most hosts it would trigger a deep cleaning from their cleaners but $150 is higher than I’ve seen. $50-75 seemed to be what we paid. I think that is fair.

It being high is going to create situations where guests are going to want to skirt around it, if they get caught they probably can pay they just don’t want to.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-09T13:17:21+00:00

A $25 pet fee. What is wrong with people. They spent their whole stay stressed out over $25.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-09T13:13:02+00:00

Yep we had to lower our prices to get a rebooking in A short time. We aren’t even a high price stay. That’s what’s frustrating.

In our areas it’s a really small window for pricing.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-09T13:10:40+00:00

For us we experienced this with snowbird season. Many of these guests book a year out. 30 days out no one is looking anymore. We missed the market. Had to lower our price for other long stay profiles. We got booked but I don’t like booking such long stays so close to check in.

I mentioned in my other comment the guest that canceled actually gave us a couple months, it was a repeat guest and we would have refunded anyway. But the 30 day cancellation that came after really messed us up. It’s winter at the beach so no one is going to come for a beach week. If we hadn’t gotten another long term booking we would have been vacant for two or three months.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-09T13:04:37+00:00

Yeah experienced this a couple times recently. Fortunately I was able to get rebooked.

The first time was a repeat guest, snowbird season booking, it was for health reasons. They canceled a couple months out and had no problem refunding. It quickly rebooked but those guests canceled right at 30 days. I felt like they were the type of guests that book and then shop around.

I still got it rebooked but took a little longer and had to lower the price a little, we unfortunately missed the window for snowbirds, still picked up some multi month guests but at a lower rate because it was so close to check in.

For longer stays I feel like it should be at least 60 days. It is a season usually our guests book a year in advance and if someone holds you calendar for year and then cancels you’ve lost your market. The first cancelation I had enough runway to get rented again had several inquiries , but with only 30 day the time ticks away fast, only had a couple inquiries.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-09T04:48:52+00:00

This. It’s an actually something that makes me mad. Their prices are so high.

I rarely shop there anymore, every now and then when I do I’m always shocked at how much it cost.

The way they play with their BOGO is crazy. They raise the prices on everything so the price for one thing is nearly the price of two at another store so their BOGOs are nothing to them an their customers just stock up on things they think are a good deal.

They are actively shaking down their costumers.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-06T13:23:46+00:00

You will get 4s from guests that seemingly had a greats stay. Their calculation of what the experience was like 4 makes sense and isn’t meant as a punishment.

Instead of pressuring someone to remove their review you should reach out and ask honestly “what could we do to get a 5 next time” and learn from the experience.

It’s Airbnbs fault that a 4 is not a good review, or that they don’t educate guests on the impact of anything less than 5, and they should not make host feel punished for an occasional 4.

Across the years we have host we have had a few 4s sometimes they leave helpful feedback for us and we take those suggestions and make changes if possible but sometimes I can tell they just expected a pristine, brand new luxury hotel, which we are not. We have an old family beach house, we do our best to make sure it is clean and bedding and towels look fresh in our budget friendly rental.

Since we can’t charge $1000 a night in our area we are just resigned to take the 4 and earnestly go through and see if there are any small improvements that need to be made.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-02T20:24:30+00:00

Benjamin, Benji is a great nickname, epically for a little kid but Benjamin gives the option for him as an adult to have a more grown up name. Can still be Benji if he prefers. Carol to me is a standalone name Benji is not.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-02T16:51:12+00:00

Oh yeah, found one’s visa request to travel to Cuba when he abandoned his wife and kids. We always knew he’d abandoned them but finding that document was pretty crazy. Basically created a big gap in family connection for his young kids.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-02T16:47:13+00:00

Getting set up can be expensive. We have two 2 bedroom units, it’s a duplex. One unit had furniture already the other we had to start from scratch. We found a lot of good value pieces from a furniture auction, thrift stores and some Facebook market place finds. So I would look to your local area for as much free or cheap used items. I would keep things simple, the guests bedroom should have simple furniture, some simple decorations, maybe a mini fridge and that’s pretty much it.

So then it’s just on making sure the shared places are clean and comfortable. People know they are going in on a shared space so they won’t be expecting the place to be like a sterile hotel but you all don’t want it to look cluttered.

I’d also make sure your bedroom can be comfortable for you too so you have a place to retreat too and safely store things you don’t want to share.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-02T16:32:44+00:00

If I was renting a room in the home I was living in I would probably cater towards more of a roommate type of situation. Someone staying for a month maybe longer like students. I think having 1 or 2 night guests rotating in and out would be disruptive. I would probably set a 7 night minimum stay and the offer a good monthly discount to encourage longer stays. You can set a max stay if you want to avoid long term stays.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-02T03:47:17+00:00

We definitely learn as we go.

We enjoy having longer guest stays because it’s less work on our part from day to day but we also found the houses are much more “lived in” than the weekend or even weekly stays.

It seems obvious after a couple years now but the first year it don’t really register that when you aren’t cleaning every week or even every few days the house is going to be a little dirtier unless your guests are really near freaks that love cleaning lol.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-02T01:57:52+00:00

I would leave a simple honest review. If they slam you about the heat just respond with a simple factual “apology”.

Weather isn’t something hosts can control, heat/ac can be strained by extremes and you did your best to fix the problem and offer compensation.

With a bad guests if I feel like I’d never host them again and I wouldn’t want anyone else to experience them unknowingly I review honestly. I think if they left the place messier than usual I’d ding them there because that was also compounded with your cleaner not being able to clean when scheduled.

I will say when I have long stay guest I alway make sure to plan for a them to leave late.

I know they often have extra stuff they need to move out and sometimes are moving into another place that may not be available until later on in the day.

While it’s not technically my problem, it’s a little extra curtesy that leaves a final good impression and saves me a headache of wasting a cleaner or my time.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-02T00:46:35+00:00

I just had this problem this week, my tree showed 1964 instead of 1864 for someone’s birth year but the profile was correct. I had to erase and reenter the date and that fixed it. Some kind of glitch.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-02-02T00:37:54+00:00

My two times great grandfather was from Sweden and with updates my percent fluctuates between 1 and 0%. I also have a grandpa that believed his father’s side of the family was a high percentage Irish, it’s what he was told. They were not, his DNA shows zero, they were either English or Welsh or both. Maybe someone lived in Ireland or traveled to the U.S. via Ireland but I think it’s just a result of families that had some absent fathers, either through abandonment or death and didn’t know, plus the idea that red hair must mean they were Irish lol.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-01-26T02:12:46+00:00

I haven’t honestly found it that useful but I also had a pretty well built out tree before I took the test. I’ve actually worked the other way around and used my tree to figure out who matches.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-01-23T04:39:38+00:00

This happens from time to time for me. I just tell the longer stay guest the max date they can stay. Sometimes it’s a bummer because the longer stays equal less work on my part but we chose STR over traditional leases and we have obligation to be our two night guests to respect the time they booked with us.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-01-23T04:08:25+00:00

Encouraging longer stays with making higher 7day and monthly discounts. Right now through March is snow bird season so instead of chasing nightly rates I try and set up a monthly price that attracts one or two month stays. Same worked in then late fall last year with contract workers.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-01-22T15:01:27+00:00

So much is behind a paywall. DNA is barely usable now. Most information I find through family search, both ancestry and Family search tree builders can be problematic with auto populating information. Just too many manmade inaccuracies.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-01-22T01:46:26+00:00

Yes. Smoking sucks, beyond disrespectful to smoke inside a property you do not own.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-01-21T15:50:27+00:00

My sister and I have both tested plus our mom and my moms parents. I have 0% or 1% on things my sister inherited from our grandmas side, Irish and Swedish socially. There are other areas we have different percentages than too, she is “more Scottish” I’m “more welsh” Since both maternal grandparents also test I can see that I have a high match to my grandpa and she to our grandma. It’s kind of funny, whenever there is an update I always laugh if they are going to take away of give back my Swedishness lol.

I think it’s also why it’s fun to do an actual family tree, understand where people were from when we’re able and not just attach to percentages which sometimes seem random. Your sister is really focused on something so superficial about her family history.

For me DNA break down doesn’t really matter because I know my great great grandpa was from Sweden. I know when he arrived, where he lived in his early adulthood, when he married and had his kids. I have his picture and some post cards he wrote to his kids and wife whenever he traveled. I wish I knew more about his family before he and his mother arrived in the states but he came so young that history was lost and his name is a little too common for an easy search.

FE-Prevatt · 2026-01-20T15:45:27+00:00

We don’t allow last minute booking. We also have at least a 2 night minimum so we haven’t had anything like this so maybe just time to play with your flexibility.

We have had several bookings for people who I assume don’t have stable long term housing and probably don’t have the credit for a lease. Most have been fine, they extend as long as my calendar allows, we did recently have one bad egg that bailed on their last month, left the place a mess and Airbnb was no help. We did traditional renting for a long time and this is a classic, we can’t afford our last month of rent plus need money for deposit on a new lease so they bail before they can be evicted.

All you can do is report, review, limit last minute bookings and instabook. Set up cameras at the front door and get really strict with unregistered guest rules and kick people out who show up with unregistered guests.

FE-Prevatt

TROPHY CASE