Airbnb removed 300,000 listings. Here is how we keep yours off that list.
In its Q3 2024 results this month, Airbnb reported $3.7 billion in revenue and, in the same breath, said it has removed 300,000 low-quality listings from the platform (Airbnb, November 7, 2024).
That is the part owners should read twice. Airbnb is not just adding supply anymore. It is pruning it. The platform has decided that a bad stay costs it more than a marginal listing earns it, and it is acting accordingly — removals, the verified-listing badges it rolled out in the spring, a rebuilt ratings system, and the Guest Favorites tier that turned reviews into a sorting mechanism.
A listing does not usually get removed for one catastrophic event. It gets removed after a slow accumulation of three-star reviews that all say slightly different versions of the same thing: it was not as clean as the photos, something was broken, it felt tired.
Every one of those is preventable, and none of them are prevented by pricing work. The weekly repricing loop runs on its own track and cannot do anything about a tired house.
The slow decay problem
Here is the thing nobody tells a new owner. A short-term rental does not fail suddenly. It decays.
A drawer pull comes off in month four. The shower grout goes gray in month seven. One of the six dining chairs develops a wobble. The mattress protector on the guest bed gets thin. The blinds in the back bedroom stop closing all the way. The kitchen has nine forks instead of twelve because guests take things.
No single item generates a complaint. Cumulatively they turn a 4.9 home into a 4.6 home over eighteen months, and by the time the review average tells you, you are already down in search results and it takes six months of good stays to climb back.
Your cleaner will not catch this. Cleaners are paid to clean, they are working against a clock between a 10 a.m. checkout and a 4 p.m. check-in, and after fifty turns they stop seeing the room the way a guest sees it for the first time.
The Boost part: quarterly inspections, and maintenance at cost
Four times a year, somebody from my team walks each home we manage with a checklist and a camera. Not a drive-by. A room-by-room.
What gets checked:
Every consumable count. Linens, towels, pillows, kitchenware, hangers. Guests take things and cleaners do not consistently report it.
Every mechanical thing that has a failure season. HVAC filters and function before summer and before winter, water heater, smoke and CO detectors, the smart lock's batteries, GFCI outlets.
Wear items. Mattresses and protectors, sofa cushions, rugs, shower caulk and grout, cabinet hardware, paint scuffs at the baseboards and door edges.
Outside. Gutters, porch boards, exterior lighting, the trash situation, the parking situation, anything a neighbor would call about.
The listing itself. Do the photos still match the house? If you replaced the sofa in March, the photos should have changed in March.
The report goes to the owner with photos, and anything that needs doing gets scheduled.
The second half of the operating detail matters as much as the first: maintenance and supplies pass through at cost. What the vendor charged is what appears on your statement. Same for the supplies we restock. We make our money on the management fee — 18% of nightly revenue for one or two homes, 17% at three or four, 16% at five or six, published in full — and not on the plumber. If a manager profits on the repair, you should expect more repairs.
What an inspection actually prevents
A $14 shower caulk job in October prevents a $2,400 subfloor repair in April. A $60 mattress protector prevents a $900 mattress. A dead smart-lock battery caught on a Tuesday prevents a guest standing in the rain at 11 p.m. on a Friday, which prevents the three-star review, which prevents the search-ranking slide, which prevents the six months of climbing back.
That is the entire argument. It is not exciting. It is arithmetic.
If you self-manage
Do this yourself. Four times a year, block two hours, and walk your own house with a phone and a notes app, room by room, as if you had just paid $340 a night for it. Sit on the sofa. Open the drawers. Run the shower until it is hot. Sleep in the bed once a year if you can stand it.
Write down everything, then fix the cheap things immediately and calendar the expensive ones. The list will be longer than you expect the first time and much shorter the fourth time. That is the point.
If you would rather have somebody else do that walk — and produce a photo report you can actually read — get a revenue estimate from Boost Rentals. Inspections are part of management here, not an add-on line, and I would rather find your problems in October than have a guest find them in April.
— Chris Hetzner, Boost Rentals