How to choose an Airbnb management company

Most hosts run this decision backwards. They collect three quotes, put the percentages in a column, pick the smallest one, and discover eighteen months later that the cheap option left them doing all the physical work, or that the expensive one owns the listing they spent two years building. Percentages are the last thing to compare, not the first. Here is the order that actually works.

Step one: decide how involved you are willing to be

Be honest about this before you speak to anybody, because every salesperson you meet will be happy to sell you a version of the answer you walked in with. There are three real positions.

You want the property to be somebody else's problem entirely. No calls, no vendor management, no decisions. That is full service, and in this directory it means Vacasa's franchisees, Casago, iTrip, Grand Welcome, AvantStay, VTrips, Natural Retreats or Portoro. You will pay somewhere between roughly 18% and 35% of gross, and you will hand over the Airbnb listing, because a manager cannot run guest messaging, pricing and turnovers from outside the account. Shortlist on contract terms and the quality of the specific local operator, not the national brand.

You want the demand handled and you will handle the house. That is half service and hybrid: Evolve at 10–15%, RedAwning and Awning at 10–18%, Air Concierge's Offsite tier at 12%. Read those rates carefully, because you are still buying and coordinating cleaning, supplies and maintenance yourself. You give up the listing anyway. The savings against full service are real; the savings against software are not, once you notice you are doing the same work.

You want to stay the host and cut the hours. That is software: Hospitable, Hostaway, Guesty, TIDY. Your Airbnb account stays yours, your reviews keep accruing to you, and nobody drives to the property. You are buying leverage on your own time, not a substitute for it. If you do not already have a cleaner you trust, start there rather than with a tool.

Only after you have picked a position does the fee comparison mean anything, because a 10% half-service fee and a 25% full-service fee are prices for different products.

Step two: run the arithmetic on your own listing

Take a two-bedroom that grosses $60,000 a year — a plausible number for a decent listing in a mid-tier US market, and a round one to reason with. Here is what each option costs against it, using published rates where published rates exist and flagging the rest as reported.

The spread between the top and bottom of that table is more than $20,000 a year on one listing, which is why the percentage feels like the whole decision. It is not, because the rows are not comparable. The bottom row includes somebody scheduling and paying cleaners, answering guests, restocking, arranging repairs and absorbing the 11pm phone call. The top row includes none of it. To compare honestly, price the gap: what would you pay a local co-host or a cleaner-plus-handyman arrangement to cover the same ground, and how many hours a week are you actually prepared to spend?

Two corrections people forget. First, most managers bill cleaning to the guest, so it does not all come out of the column above — but supplies, linen replacement, maintenance and any vendor markup do, and those are the line items nobody quotes. Second, an 18% remote tier and a 25% local tier are not seven points apart in service; the remote tier coordinates vendors you may end up sourcing yourself, which can quietly turn into a half-service arrangement at a full-service-adjacent price.

Step three: sixteen questions for the call

Ask all of them. Ask them in this order. A good operator will answer twelve of these without hesitating and will tell you plainly which three they need to check.

1. Whose Airbnb account will my listing live in — mine, or yours? Then: show me the clause in the agreement that says so.
2. If I leave, what happens to the listing, the reviews, the photography and the listing copy? Airbnb has no review-transfer process, so the honest answer is that the reviews stay with them. Anyone who implies otherwise is either confused or selling.
3. What legal entity signs this contract? With iTrip, Grand Welcome, Casago, SkyRun and now Vacasa, the counterparty is usually a local franchisee LLC, not the national brand whose website you have been reading.
4. What is the total percentage, and what is billed on top of it? Get the list in writing: linen, supplies, restocking, maintenance, technology fees, marketing fees, card-processing fees, listing-photography costs.
5. Do you mark up vendor and maintenance invoices, and by how much? VTrips is reported to carry a supervisory markup of around 10%. Whoever you ask, ask.
6. What is the owner authorisation threshold for repairs? The dollar figure above which they must call you before spending your money.
7. Can I keep using my own cleaner? And if not, why not?
8. What is the term, the notice period and the early-termination fee? The good answers in this directory are Grand Welcome's 30 days, Evolve's month-to-month and Vacasa's published 90 days' written notice. The long ones are AvantStay's twelve months and Air Concierge's one-year Offsite contract.
9. After I give notice, who keeps the revenue from bookings already on the calendar? Vacasa's terms require you to honour bookings checking out before termination. Most agreements say something on this; almost no host reads it.
10. How many owner nights do I get, and how far ahead must I block them?
11. Who sets nightly pricing, and can I override it?
12. How many properties does the person who manages my home look after? A number, not an adjective.
13. Can I call three current owners in this market? Ask for a list to choose from rather than the two references head office keeps warm.
14. Who physically attends at 11pm on a Saturday, and how long does it take them? This is the question that separates a local operator from a remote coordinator.
15. How and when am I paid, and what does the owner statement itemise? Ask to see a real redacted statement.
16. What insurance do you carry, and what am I still required to carry?

Red flags

• A percentage quoted without a written list of what sits outside it. The gap between "25%" and "25% plus everything else" is where owner disappointment lives.
• A national website promising "no long-term contracts" when the agreement will be signed by a franchisee who sets their own terms. Casago's site does exactly this.
• Reluctance to send the management agreement before a sales call.
• A national brand that cannot immediately name the local operator who would run your home.
• Competitor reviews published by a competitor. RedAwning runs a large competitor-review content operation; it is marketing, not journalism, and the same caution applies to this site.
• Anyone comparing their 10% against a 25% full-service fee as though the two buy the same thing.
• A master lease or guaranteed-income offer presented without a frank conversation about what happens when the operator cannot fill the calendar. AvantStay publishes its own article on master-lease risk — read that before you take fixed money from anybody.
• Non-refundable onboarding fees with no commitment about when the listing goes live. Evolve charges $250 up front and publishes no go-live timeframe at all.
• Any suggestion that your existing reviews will move with the listing. They will not.

Before you sign

Read the whole agreement, not the summary. Screenshot your current Airbnb listing, your review count and your search position so you have a baseline. Export your guest history. Decide in advance what result would make you leave, and check the notice period is short enough to act on it. Then go back to the comparison table and check that the company you have chosen is the shape you decided on in step one, not the one with the friendliest salesperson.

Weigh the recommendation below against the sixteen questions above, not instead of them.

Still weighing the two philosophies against each other? That comparison has its own page. Or start from the company index and read the profiles of the three you are considering.