Category Archives: TRAVEL

Your listing not showing up?

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Is your listing not showing up on your handheld or desktop?

Are you not able to find enough listings in the area you are searching?

Possible Solution: Try updating your service’s app.

 

That’s strange, I was thinking,  why is it that the only listing in our area is a place for $1400 per night? That’s not good.   I was unable to see our listing from my cell phone, until after I updated my APP.

So whichever service your use. You can see if that works for you.

 

Please like, share, comment, follow my blog or contact me if you have any questions, or if you’ve got some nice tips.

CKY

 

Copyright © 2018-2020 Challen YeeAll Rights Reserved.

To Party or not to Party

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Have you ever wondered if it was worth lending your house to someone who wanted to have a one-day  “celebration”?

Especially if you do not have built in book-end days before your next potential booking, meaning that you only have a few hours to clean between different bookings, here are 8 reasons why you should NOT book to guests wanting to use your house for their party space:

  1. People just do not care as much about being clean when they don’t have to live there. Especially all the extra guests who don’t plan on staying over night who are not signing an agreement to any house rules. I’m not saying that people are necessarily bad, they just do not have as much at stake to keep things clean.
  2. A party will fill your garbage cans quickly with smelly rotting food mixed with alcohol to smell just like a back alley sewer in San Francisco.
  3. Large amounts of alcohol result in inebriated people who spill liquids, make floors sticky and harder to clean, along with your arm chair, sofa and tables.
  4. Inebriated adults cannot supervise young children.
  5. The responsible adults are policing the inebriated adults, and are not watching their children, or they are watching their children and are not watching the inebriate adults. Hell, they could be inebriated, cause, hosts just want to have fun.
  6. You can attract unwanted attention by creating a parking lot in front of your place.
  7. Especially if you have a no-shoes-in-the-house rule, which one-day guest/host is going to police their one day visitors to take their shoes off as they go in and out of your house wth a tray of food and drinks?
  8. Remember, outdoor shoes carry floor destroying micro and macro matter and have stepped through many public bathrooms. Enough said.

The end result is, even if you charge extra for cleaning, you will have to spend more time cleaning and risk damages that you have to go through the process of proving, not to mention the anxiety wondering if any of this is true.

Please like, share, comment, follow my blog or contact me if you have any questions, or if you’ve got some nice tips.

CKY

 

Copyright © 2018-2019 Challen YeeAll Rights Reserved.

CHECKOUT CHECKLISTS

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Hey Friends of BNB!

Here’s something that I’ve been oddly resistant to but it seems more frequent our guests are requesting that I provide them a check list of things to do before checking out.

I guess after about 18 months, I have to wonder how all our guests survived without a checkout list and so I have to wonder.

I would imagine it can be pretty stressful if you don’t know to what standard the host will hold the guests to in terms of the condition of the house. And if you don’t, in some cases, though rarely, people will feel like it’s permissible to leave some greater mess that what we  would expect.

I believe we start each new booking with such a clean house, people naturally (most of the time) obligated to do a decent job of keeping things in order.

So, okay, here’s a draft of some of the things I thought of for our place, maybe it’s help both hosts and guests alike. Your place may be different and may have more or less expectations.

 

GENERAL GUIDE FOR PREPARING THE HOUSE BEFORE CHECKOUT

  • Put garbage in a trash can, but not necessarily in the bins outside (we often use used trash liners in the process of our cleanup). If it’s full, you can take it outside to the bins.
  • Wash Dishes, or rinse off chunks (and empty out into compost bin under sink) and wash in dishwasher using the supplied soap tablet.
  • Cleanup any spills anywhere at anytime.
  • Do not leave towels on floor, leave on the towel racks or the supplied dirty close baskets okay.
  • Do not need to take sheets/linen off beds.
  • Leave any used blankets on the beds (normally stowed in a package in the closets), do not put back in their plastic storage cases.
  • Not necessary to restock food you have eaten.
  • Turn off and unplug coffee makers and hot water pot, blender, and other countertop applicance.
  • Clean top of stove (mainly wipe up spills) but not with anything abrasive.
  • Do not flush garbage down any sink or toilet (toilet is used for only what is normally expected).
  • Do not leave unwrapped food out, especially candy, best to dump out garbage in compost bin outside and best wrapped in a compost bag to reduce chance of attracting pests. Similarly, Seal up used diapers, especially the #2 kind, and put into garbage bin outside.
  • Turn off water faucets, shower, bath
  • Shut garage door, make sure garage door opener is in its wall-mounted location.
  • Turn off heater, air conditioner, microwave, stove top, oven.
  • Turn off lights and shut windows.
  • Shut and lock doors on the way out

 

THANK YOU FOR STAYING AT SWEET, BRIGHT, FRESH

 

Please like, share, comment, follow my blog or contact me if you have any questions, or if you’ve got some nice tips.

CKY

 

Copyright © 2018-2019 Challen YeeAll Rights Reserved.

 

Need for two new Fruit Trees

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The tree on the left and the third tree had to come down, they stopped moving water. This photo was from the fall of 2017.

Apparently, apricot trees are pretty sensitive. 

After landscaping the back yard in the summer of 2017, the two apricot trees in the backyard died.

The one large tree actually blossoms in the spring of 2018 but then suddenly went dry.

We tried to do some deep watering but that didn’t matter.

I had to chop down one the larger of the two trees last summer and just recently had to chop down the smaller of the two, realizing that it was not responding to the season and had in fact followed suit with the other, just decided to stop moving water from its roots.

With two spots open for fruit trees, what kind of fruit trees do you like?

We definitely would like to get at least one more apricot.

 

(No promises just yet, as to how consistently I can blog here, but giving it a shot when I have time and ideas).

 

 

Please like, share, comment, follow my blog or contact me if you have any questions, or if you’ve got some nice tips.

CKY

 

Copyright © 2018-2019 Challen YeeAll Rights Reserved.

 

 

Is your BNB like another child?

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Writer’s note: I wrote this article several weeks ago but it seems like a good time to post it. I may not post another article for a while as events can blur life at times. We thank our guests for bringing their bright light to shine.

Talk to anyone who is starting their own business and they will likely, albeit sometimes grudgingly, admit their business is like adopting another baby because its survival depends on you. Now you realize you have something you need to protect that no one else cares about, except for your booked guests who are counting on you to guarantee their plans for accommodations. Oh, and your mother most likely, because mothers almost always like to se their child be successful at something.

There is certainly a wide gamut of attitudes towards people who are running an BNB, everything from being non-aware, don’t give a hoot, to those neighbors who are afraid of their street becoming the next “DELTA HOUSE” (e.g. the fraternity in the movie comedy classic Animal House).

BNB? What are you talking about? Aren’t you just renting out some rooms, and money just starts falling off the trees … It seems so easy, right?

Every neighbors worst nightmare, a BNB taking the form of Animal House with toga parties every night. (Image credit: Coral Gables Art Cinema).Image may be subject to copyright.

No, my friends, unlike our corporate jobs, if you don’t do anything and you decide to not attend to run things, your little baby will die. That’s the responsibility a host takes when they set out on the adventure of renting out their place to guests.

AirBNB, like other companies like LYFT and many other service oriented companies that help serve as the interface between consumers and proprietors, greatly eases the difficulties related to money handling and advertising while making it easier to take the first steps of running your own business, including paying taxes.

Unlike LYFT, however, taking reservations, if you’re doing it right, is a 24/7 deal. I remember running my parent’s family business of parts sales and repair of electric cars and you, yep, you can get customer calls on Sunday complaining about their broken down electric truck, especially from one of our many family-owned flower nurseries back in the day when Silicon Valley was more agricultural than technical, but you usually do not get messages and inquiries at 4 am (Pacific Standard Time), like you might get from a guest sending an inquiry from Germany or Israel like you would running a BNB.

Despite the high tech assistance, however, it does not relieve the providers of the need to perform with as much excellence as possible, no matter which business model you choose, whether it’s accommodations, driving, or any other service and this new wave of internet-based businesses seem to be highly linked to customer reviews. Every job is subject to scrutiny and a broadcast to the public.

When was the last time your corporate job was reviewed and posted on the internet for everyone to see?

So if you have critics in your life, let them critics criticize, that’s what they do, it’s in their DNA.

Whether you are running a hot dog stand or a hard driving CEO of a tech start up, just do what you are willing to put forth the energy and resources to do and stick to it if that’s what you are willing to put up with to achieve your goals. No one is going to take responsibility for your child other than you.

Please like, share, comment, follow my blog or contact me if you have any questions

CKY

 

Copyright © 2019 Challen YeeAll Rights Reserved.

 

 

 

 

9 Tips for Facing an Unoccupied Month

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Have you ever looked at your BNB schedule and see that after your current guest, you have no one booked for the next 30 days. It does give you a sinking feeling, especially if you’re relying on the income to survive.

 

Does your reservation calendar look like an empty beach? (photo of Drake’s Bay, CA north of San Francisco – by Challen)

 

There’s a number of things you can either try or consider since running a BNB you can’t really go out and start rounding up guests passing by with a lasso.

 

Here’s 9 tips, not in any particular order:

  • (1) Update your website or listing with new photos, better photos, or a catchy write up or title. So many listing around her promote Stanford, and if the listing actually resides in or near Stanford, that’s a good boost.

 

  • (2) Try lowering your prices under the next relevant search level. For example, lower them under the next $50 mark (i.e $250, $300, $350, $400, $450, etc). Searchers may be setting upper price limits to narrow down their choices.

 

  • (3)Take some faith in how guests tend to book your listing. Maybe you’ve had a lot of guests book within a week instead of two months ahead (like we’d all like to see that).

 

  • (4) Try “Instant Booking” (Airbnb). What this allows is for greater exposure to your listing as your will show up for both “Instant” and non-instant, instead of just non-instant listings.

 

  • (5) Try removing the extra guest costs if you are using them just to make the cost calculation easier.

 

  • (6) Update you listing to become more friendly to a guest. For example, use a keypad or other self-service mode of entry. This way a business man or woman doesn’t need to call you at 2 am to get a key or wonder if the key is actually in the hideaway place that you wrote.

 

  • (7) Offer something special (like food or other service), make the stay more attractive.

 

  • (8) Keep the darn place clean inside and in good order outside. It doesn’t matter of the guest is staying at a mansion or Motel 6,they want a clean place to stay. No one likes to stay in a beater. Take very positive steps and make amends in the listing and comments to make your listing a non-beater if yov’ve been reviewed as being on the dirty, trashy, or nasty side.

 

  • (9) Treat each guest and inquiry with respect and respond as soon as possible (if not immediately). Remember, you are in the hospitality business, not just a landlord or property manager. In fact, you may be the only ambassador of your town or neighborhood that the guest from another country may ever know.

 

Please like, share, comment, follow my blog or contact me if you have any questions, or if you’ve got some nice tips.

CKY

 

Copyright © 2019 Challen YeeAll Rights Reserved.

 

January 2019 Review

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For those who may be considering hosting a BNB, just starting, or thinking about being a guest, here are some insights that you may find helpful. 

A recap of my January 2019 blog posts for PaloAltoBNB. Click on the links to open the article.

Palo Alto: Things to do – Take a Hike

Starting a BNB? 8 Reasons you didn’t think about

How is Instant Booking better?

Sometimes like Grand Central Station

What about shoes and wood floors?

“CORPORATE” COORDINATORS BOOKING FOR OTHERS

Guest Tips: Initial Communication

When can we take a vacation?

Learn by jumping into chaos or “How I got involved in property management”

BNB Value vs Property Tax

Staying Connected with Guests

When Cancellations occur

 

Please like, share, comment, follow my blog or contact me if you have any questions

CKY

 

Copyright © 2019 Challen YeeAll Rights Reserved.

Staying Connected with Guests

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Once you’ve got your booking, you’ve established communication with either the guest or travel coordinator for your guests.

As a host or as a guest, you will want to know which is the best way to connect in case there are any questions of concerns. In other words, “How will you communicate when your guests arrive?”

With Airbnb, they use a messenger within their APP that allows convenient and exclusive communication channel. This is the preferred method for all Airbnb host/guest communications.

However, this is not always available, or if you are not an Airbnb or the guests are not an airbnb member. In this case, as a secondary means, a local cell phone number is often used for text messaging or, worst comes to worse, or an situation exists that requires immediate and confirmed communication.

Another variation that I’ve used recently is the text option within the Airbnb APP.

This may be needed when the guest is from a foreign country and their web access may cause problems with their Airbnb APP that’s set up for outside the USA.

My experience using the message-their-private- out-of-the-USA-phone number works very well.

It’s still not quite as nice as keeping everything under one roof but it works well indeed.

Another app that guests like to use is WHATSAPP. because they know my cell number and I am a user of WHATSAPP, sometimes I’ll get an unexpected communication through this secure means.

The moral of the story is, before a guest arrives, it’s nice to work out these issues if you suspect there will be any problems. The worse thing is if they cannot enter the house AND they cannot contact you. (knock on wood!).

Please like, share, comment, follow my blog or contact me if you have any questions

CKY

 

Copyright © 2019 Challen YeeAll Rights Reserved.

 

BNB Value vs Property Tax

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Here’s a Palo Alto near-specific problem. 

Please see the appropriate professionally certified advisor before making decisions based on what you find in the article’s content.

AND See legal Disclaimer at bottom.

Ok, let’s get on with the article…

Everyone complains about the prices in Silicon Valley, but Palo Alto takes the cake.

In a recent news article, the Palo Alto Zip Code 94301 is the record holder for highest average priced real estate in the nation, which generally translates to, expensive to own real estate, not just expensive to buy.

PROPERTY TAXES

California’s property tax  which amount to about 1.1% of your market value. That is, unless you fall under Prop 13/58 protections. There are usually other additional costs attached to your property tax, like county services or other smaller taxes, but 1.1% is the California State chunk the would be often  more than most people’s salaries. Let’s call the full market value times 1.1% “RULE #1”.

So you City Planners, before  you let a company like Google or Facebook start a big office in your little town, make sure your residents will likely be hammered with ever increasing home property values and therefore RULE #1. (unless you are in a State that does not tax property).

It may be  possible you might qualify to be waived from the market rate-based property taxes on inherited property. That’s assuming the aggregate base factor for your parents property tax is under 1M.

 

SOME RELIEF IF YOU

QUALIFY AND APPLY

BASE FACTOR IS, for those of you who do not know, the value the property tax is based on when your parent died, NOT the market value. Please consult with a Tax Advisor, but you need to APPLY for the Prop 58 Exemption (for investment properties). IF YOU DO  NOT APPLY you will suffer the consequences and your children will hate you for life for being such a ignorant poofball. Be alert, this application is time dependent after the death of your parent.

There’s good news: if the house was your parent’s primary residence, you have a 100% exemption to reassessment to market, unless you have to buy portions of it from your siblings then RULE #1 applies. Once again, please consult with a Tax Advisor who is educated in estate law and property tax laws if there is a chance you can avoid RULE #1.

And as you know, finding a single property under $1M in this area is virtually impossible in Palo Alto (unless you’re talking about EAST Palo Alto). However, if your aggregate investment properties’ BASE FACTOR all amount to less than $1M, you will have a complete Prop 58 exemption (please see disclaimer at bottom of article). If the aggregate Base Value exceeds $1M, then you will need to select which $1M of value will receive the exemption. The others will be reassessed at current market value.

The other good news is, if you have to speak to the Santa Clara County Tax Assessor’s Office, you will find some professional and helpful clerks to make sure you are pointed to the right info related to some tax exemption possibilities. Please seek their guidance and CHECK IF THESE RULES APPLY TO YOU.

 

My little RULE #1 RANT

The sad fact is, in order for a lot of residents of this area to survive, they need to rent out a room or a “granny unit” to someone to have the extra income to pay for the drudgery of RULE #1. Keep in mind what I said, many rent out just to pay the property tax, not to have extra money to send the kids to college or pay for a vacation – just to pay the damned tax.

SO the injustice is, the only people who can afford to pay the higher taxes are even more wealthy people while the less wealthy people get screwed because all of a sudden their taxes are unreal.  SO…., just some dynamics to think about in regards to taxing people to kingdom come linked to their private property or even their primary residence values… values that they have little or no control over. Sounds like slick way to rip off private property.

So which State doesn’t charge property tax?

So what does this have to do with a BNB?

Some link VALUE to NIGHTLY RATES

While it is true that there is supply and demand for accommodation services, and that raises the average price of lodging in Palo Alto and the surrounding areas, the tax responsibility is probably not on the radar of the average guest who decides to report to the world that, “there wasn’t enough value for the price at your place” (when in actuality it’s the whole expensive area, not just your place). Well…. one 4 out of 5 rating isn’t bad, but maybe we’re getting too technical.

I remember the first time we received a “4” for “Value” instead of a “5” from one of our great guests (I’m not being sarcastic, he was an excellent guest), and I actually messaged him privately wondering what his rational was. He was nice enough to give us his point of view citing the area is expensive.  Yeh, so even though we should not take it personally, it shows up on the review of our place, not Palo Alto, the City with the most expensive real estate and therefore some of the highest taxes in the United States.

OK, i’m cool now. I promise not to explode.

BTW, I don’t ask guests ever again since the first guy, why they decide on “4” instead of a “5” (LOL).

In actuality, I take a survey of area listings and have to determine what I believe is a “fair” price for what we have to offer. We’re doing alright so far.

Please like, share, comment, follow my blog or contact me if you have any questions

CKY

 

Legal Disclaimer: please note, I am not a tax advisor, or claim to have an certification to offer legal advice in the matters mentioned in this article or any post in my blogs, websites or other social media. You MUST consult with the appropriate certified legal representative to determine the facts of any matter related to or mentioned in this article or any article under my domains that may have any legal consequences before making any decisions.

 

Copyright © 2019 Challen YeeAll Rights Reserved.

When can we take a vacation?

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Hard to imagine that my wife and I have joined the ranks of becoming a mom and pop operation. Wasn’t that a thing of the past? Ma and Pa Kettle (for those of you who remember) LOL

In either case, one of a few of the ongoing concerns my wife and I have with running and hosting a BNB is:

When can we take a vacation?

One of the classic tourist spots. Venice 1989 (photo by Challen)

 

I know there’s several hosts or property managers who run several listings as their business model. We can only imagine running one.  I know hosts are encouraged to find partners to co-host, but we haven’t gotten there yet, though we have friends who host their own listings.

While it’s nice to have some of the unique advantages of running BNB that I’ve written about before (8 Reasons), it could get overwhelming multiplying that by 2x or more. Moreover, the inherent uncertainty of keeping the vacancies low can be a burden if you really need the income to pay all the bills. If you do happen to have more than one rental, having one on a lease would certainly help reduce the uncertainty in the traditional way.

Aside from the fact that our listing is bringing in needed income in a place like Silicon Valley, one of the most expensively taxed places in the world, especially in Palo Alto (many people need the extra income just to pay their property taxes, much less the mortgage) the thought actually occurs to us that it is hard to let others run your business for you.

First of all, we’re not aware of too many people who would like to jump in an help us run our business and if they did, we’re wouldn’t be so confident they would take the same level of care an responsibility of the business, for each guest and for the care of the house. We’d have to hand pick some people who are willing to jump in an help on occasion.

I realize there’s a certain amount of ego involved, and I haven’t reached the obligatory point of dire necessity yet, but it’s also really is a nice thing to receive a positive feedback from others on a regular basis and that helps make our listing attractive when new guests can be encouraged by good reviews on our listing.

The Airbnb system that allows for publicly presented positive feedback. It’s one of the attractions I also discovered from my two-month experience being a LYFT driver – if you are good, people let you know, you can feed on that and new customers can make more of an informed choice.

I apologize to all the truly great property managers out there, but when you’ve created a baby, it’s hard to let others take control.

We’ll see, we haven’t figured out how we’re going to afford and take off to see rabbits in Japan, take the kids to D.C., or even visit friends near Seattle or Denver, Italy, or wherever?

When you’re a host, your cell phone is never off. Can you imagine flying across the ocean without being able to field your messages from guests? Yeh, gotta fix this problem….

The first thing to do is start compiling  a list of people you know who may want to learn and who you think would be good at being a co-host.

I’ll let you know how things go…

 

 

Please like, share, comment, follow my blog or contact me if you have any questions

CKY

 

Copyright © 2019 Challen YeeAll Rights Reserved.