On Preventing Vacation Rental Neighbor Complaints in the First Place
(Continued from the previous article, Part 1)
The best way to deal with complaints is to prevent them from happening in the first place. Knowing you have preventative solutions in place to avoid neighbor complaints will improve your emotional state and reduce the risk of any more unpleasant confrontations. Here are our tips for keeping your neighbors happy.
Establish clear lines of communication with your neighbors
Start your relationship with your neighbors on the right foot by talking with them before you list your home as a short-term rental property. Take them a gift, like some brownies, a candy platter, or bottle of wine, listen to their concerns, and reassure them that you want a good relationship with them.
At this point, you can tell them that your booking agency does not allow parties in typical properties, and sets clear house rules, so your guests know they have to respect the neighbors and the residential area.
To keep each other updated on any issues, swap contact information. And if you feel it warrants this step, such as in the case of an overly concerned neighbor, you could send them a quick message a couple of days before each new guest arrives so they know what to expect.
A friendly relationship with your neighbors beforehand is the number one thing you can do, and will help wonders if any problems arise later.
Set clear house rules
You’d like to think that everyone knows how to behave, but it doesn’t hurt to set clear guidelines on what you expect from your guests. At least, you’ll be able to point them to the rules if they end up breaking them.
In particular, vacation homeowners should be clear on any issues that could upset neighbors like:
- Appropriate times for coming and going
- Quiet hours
- A ban on excessive noise levels, especially at night
- Parking spaces and rules
- Instructions for using communal spaces like the pool or gym
- Information about taking out the garbage
- Limits on the number of people allowed in the property one time
Your guests often appreciate knowing the boundaries before their stay, and your neighbors certainly will.
Screen ALL guests
Luxury Kosher Villas entire family of companies does not allow guests to book on their own, only request to book. Our office screens every request to help you avoid kashrus issues, troublemakers and reduce complaints. We keep extensive notes on each guest that causes problems, and maintain a database of 15,000+ approved guests. And we will only take booking that we feel will be a good fit with the property and not result in complaints from the neighbors.
But owners and neighbors need to realize that we, and no system, are perfect, and the determined troublemaker can occasionally get past the filters we put in place.
Target a specific audience, but be smart
Obviously, you should never judge a book by its cover, but some groups of guests, like teenagers, singles and those specifically looking to make a wild party, make more noise than others.
We try to avoid this type of group by setting limits on guest numbers or designing your short-term rental property to attract families with guest rooms tailored to couples with children.
We can also work with owners to arrange furniture in such a way to limit food going into living areas or for larger spaces being used as a party space. Tailoring your space in a way that avoids parties will help you avoid excessive noise, mess, and potential disturbances.
Ban parties
Airbnb has officially banned parties in all its property listings. Obviously, there are civilized parties that don’t involve loud music, bad behavior, and damage to your vacation rental property, but the easiest way to avoid problems caused by rowdy parties is to ban them completely.
With the exception of a few properties tailored for events, LuxuryKosherVillas has a ‘No Parties’ rule across all of our platforms.
Check-in Check-out times
Limiting the times when guests can check in and check out will reduce the noise they can make with wheelie suitcases, car doors slamming, and excited chatter during nighttime hours. You can even limit check-ins to the weekend, which will have the added bonus of encouraging longer stays.
Setting daytime or weekend check-in and check-out times will avoid disturbing your neighbors with the noise of wheelie suitcases. Each of our listed properties has specific days and times where check-ins and check-outs are restricted, and we work with each property or area to come up with the best solution
Avoiding complaints
Getting into a long-drawn-out conflict with your neighbors over your vacation rental is terrible for stress levels and might even land you in trouble with the authorities.
But, as long as you’re complying with local and HOA rules and show a willingness to compromise, you should be able to deal with most issues as they arise and continue to grow your vacation home business.
Even better, you can avoid most complaints from happening in the first place by listing with a reputable vacation rental company like LuxuryKosherVillas, FloridaKosherVillas or Lakewood Hosts.
We’ll take care of entire the screening process, and use our wealth of experience to make the determination whether you would want them as a guest in your home.
You’ll get peace of mind that your property is safe.
