For Owners
((Pricing))
In many ways, management fees are irrelevant. What matters is what will hit your bank account at the end of the month. So when comparing management firms, ask what you will earn, not what you’ll pay. And then have the manager justify it.
We are confident you’ll earn as much as 300% more with us than our competition, and we’re happy to prove it with a private screen share. On one half of the screen is our management software’s revenue module showing annual earnings; on the other is the comparable property’s rental listing. We’ll go through a collection of similar homes and you can decide for yourself where your home may fall in the matrix.
Here’s an example of a typical 3br, blurred for privacy. Also note the metrics: $152k gross revenue for a 3br with a max guest count of 6, and a 4.92 rating over 300 reservations.
Our rates are in the middle of the pack. Owners pay a flat fee of 30% of the nightly rent collected, and are responsible for credit card fees and commissions charged by whatever booking platform the reservation was made on. These differ from engine to engine but we adjust prices to try to compensate for the different fee structure. In other words, we raise the rate by different percentages to offset the credit card and platform service fees.
As an owner, remember that you’re way better off paying 30% of $150k than 20% of $50k. Visit our services page to see what’s included in our management fee.
Here are some examples for various platforms about how the pricing plays out:
- Direct Booking on this website: The owner pays Stripe a 3% credit card fee for the entire transaction (cleaning, tax, rent). The Wolf will take 30% of the nightly rent only. Guests will pay substantially less because there won’t be a booking site commission.
- AirBnB Booking: The owner pays a 3% credit card fee (dubbed a “service fee” by AirBnB) for cleaning and rent, which is auto-deducted from your payout from AirBnB. The Wolf will take 30% of the nightly rent. Note that guests pay AirBnB a sliding commission of around 15% to keep the system open.
- VRBO: Owner pays Stripe a 3% credit card fee on the entire transaction (cleaning, tax, rent). VRBO takes a 5% commission on the cleaning and rent. The Wolf takes 30% on nightly rent only. Like AirBnB, the guest pays VRBO a sliding commission of 10-13% to keep the system open.
- VRBO with Annual Subscription: This is only offered on specific homes where we think it will pay off over the course of the year. Owners pay Stripe a 3% credit card fee on the entire transaction (cleaning, tax, rent). VRBO takes no commission from the owner (but does charge a $699 annual subscription). The Wolf takes 30% on nightly rent only. Like AirBnB, the guest will pay VRBO a sliding commission of 10-13% to keep the system open.
In all cases, owners will be invoiced by The Wolf on a monthly basis. They will still need to file sales tax for VRBO and direct bookings (AirBnB collects and remits sales tax automatically). Wolf invoices will be for our management percent minus repairs, maintenance and any fees that were in addition to our typical management fee.
The Wolf’s management fees are smack dab in the middle of the market, and we think that’s fair.
We only have to outperform lower-priced competitors by a small margin to put you on top.
Let’s say Acme Property Management charges 20% (and let’s assume that, like The Wolf, there’s no linen fee or a cleaning markup or whatever else). Acme generates $50,000 in nightly rates and you net $40,000. The Wolf, at 30%, needs to generate $57k in gross rent to net you the same amount. That’s 14% more in rent, which should be easy considering we double to quadruple the revenue for the homes we’ve taken over.
At the end of the day, we will market your property to multiple platforms and adjust prices up and down so the payouts stay relatively consistent from platform to platform, and we feel totally confident we can keep your guests happier and boost your bottom line better than anyone else around.