Dear General Manager,
Please cancel rental of our unit xxx as it is ridiculous that we pay fees ($ 120) to rent it rather then making a revenue
I received this email today. It was not to me, it is to General Manager of a condo-hotel in Daytona Beach Shores, but the owner, my former client, copied me.
So, here we are. February 19, 2013. Daytona 500 is just in few days, every room in the area is rented for the highest amount they ever charge during the year, and my client wants out, because he received the invoice for $120…for the month of January.
So they decide that it does not make sense to keep ithe unit on rental, when not only they did not get any money, but had to shell money out of pocket. Yes, $120 is not the amount to break the back, but does it make sense to lose so blatantly?
Well, maybe it does.
While I would agree that rentals are not great, I would argue with the timing of taking the unit off the rentals.
Usually owners of condo-hotel units get their check about 3 weeks into the following month. The check that my client has received today is for January. So, his anger is for January market conditions. And January is the slowest month of the year (together with December).
But not February. February and March are the busiest months in Daytona area because of races in February and Bikeweek in March. So, yes, there was no income in December and January. But it is the best time in February and March.
So, yep, if you did not want to rent it in January, I could understand it. But angry with January, and taking the unit off rentals in February is simply a sign of anger.
What about not making money, but paying the management? Is it true? That happens. No rent, but suddenly there are expenses. Deep cleaning at a tune of about $130 per room, and some other charges miraculously happening to the unit when it is empty.
But I don’t think it is sinister as it may sound. They sure wouldn’t want to disrupt the busy time with having cleaning company vans with all the lines, and they do not want to go through the hassle of venting and drying it all when the resort is packed, so yes, they do it when the hotel is empty, and no money coming in.
Of course, paying $120 off from over $1,000 in February wouldn’t really be noticed, but paying it for January, when they rented the unit for 2 nights for deeply discounted price, so that at the end of the day, my client has to pay them is different. But they can only charge the owners for services provided for the month when they were provided.
It is not about the decision he made, it is about the timing of this decision.
My client is not punishing anyone else except for himself.
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