This transcript is for episode 31 of Vacation Rental & Airbnb Mastery. We discuss why vacation rental maintenance and airbnb maintenance should be top of mind and most important items to include in your maintenance plan.
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Announcer:
Welcome to The Vacation Home Podcast, the only podcast dedicated to helping vacation rental owners self-manage their properties. Your host delivers short and sweet episodes with actionable advice, tips, and strategies to level up your hosting skills, whether you are a complete beginner, or been in the vacation home rental business for a while, you are in the right place to get the tools you need to succeed. Here are your hosts, John Candelario and Tim Casey.
Monthly vacation rental maintenance is necessary. Here is what to think about.
John Candelario:
So today, Tim and I are going to talk about maintenance and what you should be thinking about running your short-term rental in terms of monthly maintenance. Because if you don’t maintain your home, it’s not going to stay pretty for long. Tim, you want to talk about what you do for monthly maintenance at your rental?
Tim Casey:
Yeah, so John, the way I think about this, and again, I only think about this today because I’ve learned some lessons the hard way, but I think about monthly maintenance as preventative maintenance. So what are those things that I want to make sure get done monthly so that the guest doesn’t experience a problem during their stay and that I don’t have an expensive repair down the road. So here are the things that I think about and John, I’m sure you’ve got more than I do, but first off, I want to make sure my HVAC filters are changed regularly. I have them checked monthly and then replaced as needed. Number two, if you’re in a hot climate, you’ll want to make sure that the air conditioning drain is kept clean.
Easy to do, takes about five minutes to do, but if you don’t do it, what happens is the algae will build up in those drain lines and then the HVAC will stop operating efficiently, so that’s number two. Number three is I pour a product down all the inside drains, sink drains, shower drains, tub drains, there’s several products on the market, but I want to keep the drains flowing freely. What you’ll find is with a lot of renters, those drains will start to back up and they’ll drain slowly unless you keep them maintained. That’s number three.
Number four is batteries. I want to make sure that the smoke detector batteries are checked and the remote control batteries are changed fairly often because the last thing you want is a trip charge associated with this remote control doesn’t work. Next is light bulbs. Checking the house for light bulbs to make sure they’re all working properly, keeping some backups in your owner closet, and then finally, television connectivity. Making sure that if you’re offering some sort of cable service, that the televisions are connected to all the services correctly. What I find is having one service company deal with all these things on a monthly basis, yeah there’s a little bit of cost, but what I find is it certainly saves those expensive repair bills down the road.
John, are there others that you can think of?
Smart devices and appliances in your vacation rental also need constant maintenance service.
John Candelario:
I would think all the smart devices, if they’re not connected to check them or make sure that your WiFi connection to your doorbell camera or your NoiseAware or whatever you’re using is working and maybe not a monthly item but checking your fire extinguisher and your first aid stuff, making sure it’s up to date and stocked and then also making sure your smoke detector, you mentioned batteries but that the smoke detectors aren’t beeping and that they’re all fully operational and then the washer and dryer. Like if you have one there you need to clean out the dryer vent, you have to make sure the dryer vent is getting cleaned out so you don’t cause a fire hazard and you keep your dryer running more efficiently. So think about also appliances like your refrigerator has coils and they need to be cleaned, because if you don’t, it will stop functioning eventually. So all those things that you may not think about every time you’re in there, you don’t want it to become a problem when your guests are staying there. So everything Tim said is spot on. I would just think about going through your appliances, making sure they’re all functioning, things like safety and then you’ll be way more prepared for guests coming in, especially when you have really quick turnover.
Tim Casey:
Yeah, and I guess in conclusion, what I would say is this is not meant to overwhelm you or appear to be daunting, if you’re listening to this podcast. What it is just a simple reminder of you find that good service, that once a month, and that’s really all it takes, once a month can go to your home and have this checklist of items to go through gives you the confidence that you’re offering a great property to your guests and that you’re not going to have an expensive repair bill because preventative maintenance wasn’t performed. We’re just trying to provide tips, lessons learned from mistakes made, to help you manage your vacation rental property so that you can have great guests longterm.
John Candelario:
Absolutely, and I hope you can apply some of this stuff to your home because the more prepared you are, the better your rental is going to do.
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