Traveling doesn’t have to mean ruining dedicated diets or budgets.
Budgeting for food expenditures during travel to any destination can be almost as difficult as forecasting the week’s weather. When staying at a traditional hotel, the challenge is multiplied as travelers face the added expense of dining out for breakfast, lunch and dinner. While the majority of quality hotels do not offer full kitchens, professionally managed vacation rentals allow guests to enjoy their favorite (and often healthier) meals and snacks, as each property provides a full kitchen stocked with clean utensils, pots, pans, plates and ample cabinet/refrigerator space for food storage.
“For my family, including grandkids, the best part of staying in a vacation rental was having breakfast in our jammies,” explains Kathy Ogden, a traveler from Clovis, Calif., who stayed with Monterey Bay Property Management. “We loved the freedom to have meals at our leisure and have home-cooked meals instead of dining out.”
Often costing less than a single hotel room, vacation rentals afford travelers an accommodations lifestyle unlike any other, providing considerably more space (both for living and dining), amenities, guest services and privacy than other, more traditional lodging options.
We are proud of the length of our relationships with the property owners for whom we manage. We still manage property today for owners who joined us in 1986, when our company was established. These long-term relationships are successful because of your trust in our ability to handle issues that come up at your property.
One of those areas is maintenance. As you know, a property owner must be willing to maintain his property in a manner suitable for rental. The rental of property is a business. Maintenance of the property is a business expense. If a one neglects one’s business, the income it produces will decline. We have seen that happen over the years to properties that are “milked” for income with no revenue reinvested to maintain and improve the property.
We interview and contract with licensed, bonded maintenance providers, dispatching the appropriate maintenance person to your property, overseeing the work to ensure quality, and processing the maintenance charge to your account. We contract with only licensed, bonded maintenance people to work at your home. This is important for liability reasons, as well as to insure quality workmanship. We can negotiate better prices from most vendors due to the volume of work that we give them. We contract for the most competitive commercial rates available, so it is very likely that the rate you will pay for maintenance we provide will be less than you could contract for individually. We survey local maintenance providers each year as to their cost, hours available, and qualifications to insure that we have contracted with the best personnel at the best prices. You may be able to contract for a lower rate from an unlicensed person; however, keep in mind that you will need to provide workman’s compensation insurance for that person, which, of course, increases your cost.
Finally, because we pay our vendors within agreed-upon time frames, they are extremely responsive to us. This insures that your tenants and your property get the service required as quickly as possible. When it is raining and lots of people are discovering that they have a leaky roof, the leaky roofs we manage get attention first. This fast service not only protects your property from further damage, it reduces your liability to your tenant.
If you have any questions at all regarding how the maintenance at your home is provided, please contact us.
Monterey Bay Property Management is now accepting all applications to rent with NO application fees! Start your property search at MBPM, where it won’t cost you $20, $30, or even $40 per person to apply. We recognize that these are challenging economic times, and we are looking for ways to make the rental application process easier and more affordable.
