Quora is a social network for asking questions. It can be lots of fun. Feel free to connect with me there. I like to help people with Airbnb related questions on there. Here’s my answer to the Quora question: How much should an Airbnb co-host charge?
Answer:
It’s a tough one. Any percentage cut is going to leave one party feeling short changed.
70% owner / 30% co-host? That’s a lot of money for the owner to give up and may leave them in the red once mortgage, taxes and utilities are included. Besides, it is their capital at risk so they should receive the most reward.
90% owner / 10% co-host? Happy owner with (hopefully) positive cash flow. But that co-host is only making around $10 a day for the average rental. Hardly seems worth it. They certainly won’t be very motivated.
I decided I didn’t need a co-host to help with my listing (despite being 4000 miles away) since I had a good fixed-fee cleaner who would also do other call outs for $25 a time (such as when someone had to be in for a plumber to come) and used all the tools of automation I could think of. I made a list of them here.
I’m going into partnership for my next Airbnb project though so have been thinking about how to deal with the money. We will both be active in the work, and neither of us the true property owner (since we will rent the space). I think we will take a 50/50 split of net profits (so after all expenses etc have been paid out).
Hope that helps.
PS Cleaning should be done as a fixed fee and this cleaning fee should be included in the listing. If your co-host does it, they get the fixed fee. If they outsource it to someone else, then the contract cleaner gets it. Make it quite a high fee, so that when there’s not much to do they are winning, and when there is lots to do they don’t feel like they are losing.