How do Resortifi hosts keep great relations with their neighbors

EYour vacation rental home might be getting great reviews from guests and making a tidy profit. But if your property is in a residential area that isn’t specifically aimed at tourists, you risk alienating your neighbors. You might even attract the attention of the local authorities and face a ban on your vacation rental property.

Your best strategy is to get your local community on your side and build great vacation rental neighbor relationships. If you’re proactive in communicating with your neighbors, you’ll be more likely to achieve a peaceful solution should problems arise.

Let’s begin by looking at the strategies you can use to build trust and rapport with your neighbors

Communicate and show you care

One way or another, your neighbors are going to find out about your vacation rental, but how they hear about it will affect their reaction. The last thing you want is for your neighbors to realize they’re living next to a vacation rental when they notice a group of strangers in your backyard.

Tell your neighbors about your plans before you list your property on Resortifi. Take them a bottle of wine or a gift basket and try to put their minds at ease by showing you’ve given careful thought to how you’re going to manage your rental. For example:

• Assure them you’ve got all the necessary permits as per compliance requirements
• Tell them you plan to screen your guests
• Explain how you’ll market the property and the types of guests you aim to attract
• Tell them about the house rules you’ll set to ensure guests are respectful of your residential neighborhood.
• Give your neighbors your contact information and a direct line for emergencies, and make sure you answer their call immediately.

Find out what problems they’ve had in the past

Ask your neighbors about their past problems with rental properties in the neighborhood. If your neighbors are opposed to the idea of living next door to a vacation rental, it’s possible they’ve had a bad experience in the past.

Listen to their concerns and explain what plans you have in place to address them. So if your neighbors tell you they once lived next door to a short-term rental where guests arrived in the middle of the night and woke them up, you can assure them that you’re only going to allow check-in during the day, or even at weekends.

Ultimately, you want your neighbors to feel they’ve had the chance to air their concerns and that you’ve listened to them.

Set clear house rules

Setting house rules so your guests know what you expect from them will encourage good behavior. You can set out your house rules in the listing itself, and add them to your confirmation email and other correspondence.

Getting the tone right is important. You want to be firm, but not be so draconian that you risk alienating your guests before they even arrive.

In particular, you should set clear rules on issues that might disrupt neighborhood relationships like parking, check-in and check-out times, excessive noise, use of communal areas, and how many people can be in the property at once.

Screen your guests

You can screen guests yourself by checking out their profiles on Resortifi or to see what other hosts have said about them. Unfortunately, this isn’t a foolproof system as it’s easy to create a new guest profile if you get a bad review and want to hide the evidence.

Encourage them to reach out

Encourage your neighbors to keep in touch and respond quickly to their concerns. To get your communication with neighbors off to a good start, you can send your neighbors a quick message to let them know when guests are arriving and follow up afterward to make sure everything was fine.

As well as letting them know about guest arrivals, you can keep communication channels open in other ways. If you’ve set up a guidebook to the area, you can share it with them and ask if they have other recommendations for restaurants or local attractions.

Also if you have a regular gardener or housekeeper who works for you, you can ask your neighbors if they’d be interested in employing them too. You might be able to negotiate a discounted rate, and your neighbors will appreciate the fact you’re organizing a useful service for them.

Install noise monitoring hardware

Most complaints from neighbors about a short-term rental relate to noise. To reduce the chance of a party taking place that upsets your neighbors, create a noise reduction action plan that includes:

• Clear guidelines for guests on quiet hours
• Consequences for guests that violate your house rules about noise ordinances
• A limit on the number of guests who can stay
• Limiting parties

Designate parking spaces

If parking is at a premium in your area, your neighbors won’t be very happy if your guests take the few available parking spots. Consider paying for a nearby car park if your property is in a city or town center with limited parking. Or you can suggest a place where your guests can safely leave their car and get public transportation to your property.

Trash management plan

Every residential neighborhood has its own rules and regulations about which days to take out the trash, where to leave it, and which items can be recycled.

If you provide your guests with detailed instructions on what to do, there’s a good chance they’ll respect the house rules. But it’s worth having a backup plan in case sorting and taking out the trash isn’t high on your guests’ list of priorities for their stay. This can involve:

• Sending a friendly reminder to guests to take on the trash on collection day
• Asking a neighbor to alert you if they spot any trash piled up outside your property
• Asking your housekeeper to keep an eye on the property during a stay and dispose of any trash left outside