33 Questions to Ask an Airbnb Property Manager

Hiring a short-term rental manager is closer to picking a business partner than buying a service. They will set your prices, talk to your guests, walk through your home more often than you do, and hand you a number at the end of each month that you mostly have to take on faith. Most owner interviews fail because they stay on the surface: "do you do cleaning?" Yes, everyone does cleaning. The useful questions are about process, and the useful signal is whether the answers are specific.

Here are the 33 we'd ask, grouped by topic, with notes on what a good answer sounds like. We manage homes in the Hudson Valley ourselves, so yes, we have skin in this game, and yes, we'd welcome being interviewed against this list.

Before the interview: ask for three things

Request the complete fee schedule, a sample owner statement and the management agreement. These make the conversation concrete: you can compare what is charged, what is reported and what happens if the relationship ends.

For Haus, start with the published fees and worked example and our two property case studies. Ask every manager to explain the period and limitations behind their results.

Pricing and revenue

Start here, because this is where the money is made or quietly lost, and it's where vague answers hide best.

1. How do you decide my nightly rate, specifically? "We use dynamic pricing software" is not an answer; it's the beginning of one. Every manager uses software. The question is what rules govern it. We think any manager should be able to defend their process against the pricing rules we publish.
2. How often do prices change, and who approves a change before it goes live? Listen for whether a human reviews anything, or whether the software runs unattended.
3. What stops the system from cutting my rate week after week? A good answer names a floor, a rule, or a review step. A blank look means there isn't one.
4. When do you set holiday rates and minimum stays? Guests book July 4 and the winter holidays three to six months out. If holiday rules go in "a few weeks before," the best bookings are already gone.
5. What occupancy do you target for a home like mine, by season? A real revenue manager has a number and can say why. In the Hudson Valley, a summer target and a February target should be very different.
6. Can I see the pricing decisions made on my home last month? If decisions aren't logged, they can't be reviewed, by them or by you.

Fees, money, and reporting

7. What is the all-in cost, with every fee listed? Get the commission, monthly fees, onboarding fees, and any per-service charges in one written list. Ours is published, which makes comparison easy.
8. What is not included? The gap between "management fee" and "total cost" is where owners get surprised: linen programs, maintenance markups, restocking charges, tech fees.
9. What is my cleaning fee, how does it compare to the market, and who keeps it? An inflated cleaning fee suppresses bookings and hides margin.
10. When and how do I get paid? Fixed monthly date, clear statement, direct deposit. Anything vague here is a red flag with compounding interest.
11. What does the monthly statement actually show? Revenue by stay, fees itemized, expenses documented. If a sample statement can't be produced on request, imagine reconciling one in March.
12. Are owner funds held separately from the company's operating money? Ask directly. The answer tells you about bookkeeping discipline everywhere else.

Your listing and marketing

13. If we part ways, who owns the listing and its reviews? With some national managers, the listing lives in their account and your review history walks away with them. This single question can be worth more than the fee difference. We've written about why.
14. Is professional photography included, and who owns the photos?
15. Who writes the listing copy, and when was the last time you rewrote one? Listings decay. A manager who has never rewritten a listing is running set-and-forget marketing.
16. Which channels will my home be on besides Airbnb? VRBO at minimum. Ask how calendars stay synced.
17. What share of your bookings are direct or repeat guests? Not disqualifying either way, but the answer reveals how they think about demand.

Operations and housekeeping

18. Who actually cleans my home, your team or a subcontractor, and who inspects the work?
19. How is laundry handled, on-site or hauled off? Mundane, but it determines turnover speed and linen quality.
20. Who restocks consumables, and how is that billed?
21. How do repairs work: who does them, what gets approved by me first, and is there a markup? Get the approval threshold in writing.
22. Does someone walk the home between stays? The difference between catching a leak Tuesday and hearing about it from a guest Friday.

Guests

23. How do you screen guests? Listen for an actual process: platform verification, booking-pattern review, house-rule acknowledgment, not just "the platforms handle it."
24. Who answers a guest at 2 a.m., and how fast? Ask who, specifically. A call center in another time zone is a different product than a local team.
25. Walk me through the last damage claim you filed. Past behavior beats policy documents. You want evidence they document, file, and recover.
26. How do you enforce house rules on pets, parties, and occupancy?

Compliance and risk

27. Do you know my town's short-term rental rules, and will you handle the permit? In Ulster County the rules genuinely differ town by town; our town-by-town guide shows how much. A manager who shrugs at this question is a liability.
28. Who files the occupancy tax? Someone has to. Make sure it's named in the contract.
29. Are you licensed and insured, and what does your coverage actually cover? In New York, ask specifically about real estate licensing.

The relationship, and the exit

30. How many homes does the person managing mine handle? Portfolio size per person matters more than portfolio size.
31. How do I block dates for my own use? It should be self-serve and instant, not an email request.
32. Who is my point of contact, and how often will I hear from you when nothing is wrong? Silence-until-there's-a-problem is the most common owner complaint in this industry.
33. What is the contract term, the notice period, and exactly what happens to my listing, reviews, photos, and future bookings if I leave? Ask this last, and get it in writing. The quality of a manager shows in how gracefully they let you go. For a side-by-side on how the local and national players compare on exactly this, see our comparison of Hudson Valley management companies.

Turn answers into a decision

After each interview, write down the answer, the document or example supporting it, and anything still unresolved. Keep the same revenue assumption when comparing fees. A higher revenue projection is not evidence by itself.

• Pricing: can the manager explain an actual decision, its reason and its result?
• Costs: can you calculate recurring fees, onboarding and property expenses separately?
• Reporting: can you follow a reservation from revenue through expenses to the owner payout?
• Control: are your own stays, listing ownership and exit arrangements clear in writing?

You're not scoring a quiz; you're listening for specificity. Vague answers on one or two questions are normal. Vague answers on pricing, fees, and exit terms, the three places where money quietly moves, are a pattern.

And this list works in both directions. If you're already with a manager, or managing it yourself, run the pricing section against your own setup. If the honest answer to "what triggers a price change" is "the software decides," that's worth fixing, whoever fixes it.

If you want to interview us against this list, we're easy to reach. Our fees are published, our pricing rules are published, and our owner overview explains services, owner use, reporting and onboarding. Justin replies personally within 24 hours; if your home is a fit, he prepares a free revenue projection.