Compare San Diego Airbnb Management Proposals: 6 Questions

The headline percentage is the least useful line in a management proposal until you know what it is charged on. A 10% fee on net rental income and a 10% fee on everything a guest pays are not the same offer, even though the proposal pages look identical.

Comparing percentages alone is the weakest possible comparison, because the percentage can stay the same while what you pay in a year changes. The line items around it do the work: what the fee is charged on, what is added on top, what the base rate includes, who is physically in San Diego, how you leave, and how spending gets approved.

This is a working checklist. Run it against each proposal you hold. For every question there is a specific thing to request in writing, because a verbal answer on a sales call is not a term. If a manager won't put an answer on paper, that is your answer.

By the end you will have one table with every proposal in the same rows, and the cheapest-looking one may no longer be the cheapest.

Start with what the headline percentage is charged on

A percentage is half a sentence. The other half is the base it multiplies. Proposals use at least three different bases: gross booking revenue (everything the guest pays, sometimes including cleaning fees), net revenue after platform fees, or revenue after specific deductions the manager defines. The same 10% produces visibly different invoices depending on which one is written into the agreement.

Work a single month through each proposal. Take a real month from your own Airbnb or Vrbo history, say a booking that paid the nightly rate, a cleaning fee and the platform's guest-side charges. Ask each manager to show, in a dollar figure, what their fee would have been on that booking. Don't accept a formula. Accept a number.

Then ask three narrow questions in writing:

• Is the fee calculated before or after platform commissions?

• Are cleaning fees, pet fees and extra-guest fees part of the base?

• Is the fee charged on money collected, or on money booked, including stays later cancelled or refunded?

That last one matters more than owners expect. A fee on booked revenue means you can pay on income you never receive. A fee on collected revenue ties the manager's pay to what actually lands.

Put the answers in the first row of your comparison. Two managers who both say "10%" are not quoting the same price until their bases match. Atlia's fee is a flat 10%, and the same discipline applies to it: ask for the base in writing from every manager, including us.

List everything added on top of the base rate

The base rate is the number on the first page. The add-ons live on page six. Your job is to drag every one of them onto a single list, because a proposal with a lower base and five add-ons can cost more than a proposal with a higher base and none.

Ask each manager for a complete fee schedule, not a summary. Specifically request any charge for:

• Onboarding, setup or listing creation

• Photography or staging

• Software, channel-manager or technology fees

• Linen, laundry or supply markups

• Maintenance coordination, including a percentage added to repair invoices

• Guest-damage claims handling

• Owner statements, tax filing assistance or accounting

• Lease-up, re-listing or transition fees

The repair markup deserves its own question. If a repair costs $400 and the manager adds 10% to the vendor invoice, you are paying a second management fee on every fix. Ask directly: are repairs and supplies passed through at cost, or is there a markup?

Atlia's published position is a flat 10% management fee with repairs and supplies passed through at cost. No other tiers or add-ons are published. Whatever a competing proposal says, hold it to the same standard: if a line item exists, it should be on paper with a dollar or percentage attached.

Watch for the phrase "as needed" or "at manager's discretion" next to any cost. It means the number is unbounded. Ask for a cap or an approval threshold, and write it into your comparison as a separate row.

Check what the base rate actually includes

Two proposals can quote the same percentage and cover different jobs. One includes guest messaging, pricing and turnovers. The other includes a listing and a calendar, and bills everything else. The base rate is only comparable once you know what is inside it.

Build a short inclusion list and tick it for each proposal. A full-service engagement for a short-term rental covers:

• Guest communication, including messages during a stay

• Dynamic pricing, with a named person or process owning rate changes

• Turnover and cleaning coordination between stays

• Maintenance coordination

• Owner reporting

For each item, ask who does it and whether the base fee covers it. "Pricing" is the one to press hardest. Some proposals mean a pricing tool the manager subscribes to and sets once. Others mean someone adjusting rates against demand through the year. Ask how often rates are reviewed and who is accountable when a weekend sits empty.

Also ask what is explicitly excluded. A good proposal states its exclusions. A vague one lets you discover them in month two, usually when something breaks.

This is where a cheap-looking proposal can fall apart. If a 10% manager quietly bills turnover coordination or maintenance coordination separately, you are comparing a 10% scope against a 10% scope plus extras. Atlia's flat 10% covers guest communication, dynamic pricing, turnover and cleaning coordination, maintenance coordination and owner reporting. Ask every competitor to name which of those five sit inside theirs.

Find out who is physically local and who answers a neighbor complaint

A San Diego rental needs a person who can reach the property. If you live out of state, this is the question to press hardest.

The city's rules put the pressure on the local contact. Under the short-term residential occupancy rules, the local contact has to respond to a reported complaint in person or by phone within one hour and take action to resolve it. Hold every proposal to that one-hour window. Our guide to the San Diego STRO local contact rules covers the requirement in full, and the host responsibilities that cannot be delegated are worth reading before you sign anything.

Ask each manager three things in writing:

• Do you have staff based in San Diego, and where?

• Who covers the local-contact role, and is it included in the management rate or billed per incident?

• What is your documented response time to a neighbor complaint, and who is on call when the primary person is unavailable?

The designation itself is the host's to make. A manager can cover the role, but you are still the one who names the contact. Atlia's staffed San Diego base covers the local-contact role and responds in person or by phone inside the city's one-hour window, included in the management rate.

Be skeptical of any proposal that answers "our team is available" and never names a place or a person. Local means someone can be at the door, and a proposal should say who.

Read the contract terms and the exit

The proposal is a sales document. The management agreement is the contract. Ask for the actual agreement, not a summary, before you decide, because the terms that hurt are the ones that appear only there.

Read for five things:

• Term and renewal. Is it month-to-month, or a fixed term that auto-renews? Note the renewal date and the notice window, since an auto-renewal can lock you in for another term.

• Termination. Can you leave for convenience, or only for cause? What notice is required, and is there a termination fee?

• Tail fees. Does the manager keep charging a commission on bookings they made before you left, for stays that happen after? Check whether the agreement says so, and for how long.

• Ownership of the listing. Who holds the Airbnb or Vrbo account, the reviews and the guest history? If the listing sits under the manager's profile, you may lose your review history on exit.

• Handover. Will they transfer bookings, calendars and guest messages cleanly when the relationship ends?

Owners leaving a current manager already know why this matters. The exit is where a contract shows what it was built to protect. Our pieces on switching Airbnb managers in San Diego and the compliance side of changing managers walk through the transition.

If a manager is confident in their service, a clean exit clause costs them nothing. Resistance to one tells you how they expect the relationship to go.

Ask how spending is approved and what reporting you get

Money leaves your account in two ways: the management fee, and everything the manager spends on your behalf. The second is where control is won or lost, so ask how it is governed before the first repair.

Get an answer in writing to these:

• Is there a dollar threshold above which the manager must ask you first? What is the number?

• How do emergencies work? Who decides, and how fast do you hear about it?

• Do you see the vendor invoice, or only a line on a statement?

• Are repairs and supplies charged at cost, or marked up?

A proposal with no approval threshold is a proposal with an open checkbook. Set a number you are comfortable with and see whether the manager accepts it. Atlia's model keeps the owner in control through clear approvals and transparent reporting, while the daily operational work comes off your plate.

Then look at reporting, because it is how you will actually experience the relationship. Ask for a sample owner statement from a real property with details removed. Check whether it shows gross booking revenue, platform fees, the manager's fee, expenses with invoices attached, and the net payout, all in one place. Ask how often you receive it and in what form.

A statement you can't reconcile against your own bank deposits is a statement you can't trust. If a manager hesitates to show a sample, that is the most useful data point in the whole comparison. Add two rows to your sheet: approval threshold, and a pass or fail on the sample statement.

Put the proposals side by side

Now stop reading and build the table. One row per question, one column per proposal, and every cell filled with a written answer or a plain "not provided." Blank cells are findings.

The rows, in order:

• Fee percentage and what it is charged on (booked or collected, before or after platform fees)

• Every add-on, with its dollar or percentage amount

• Repair and supply treatment (at cost or marked up)

• What the base rate includes and excludes

• Staff physically in San Diego and who covers the local contact

• Term, renewal, termination notice and tail fees

• Listing and review ownership on exit

• Approval threshold and sample owner statement

Then run your own month through it. Take the real booking from the first section and compute the all-in cost under each proposal: base fee, plus add-ons you would actually trigger, plus the repair treatment applied to a typical $400 fix. The proposal that looked cheapest by headline percentage sometimes lands third.

Two cautions. First, don't average the rows or total the cells as if every row weighed the same. The local-contact row and the exit row are not interchangeable with a software fee. Weight them by how much damage each could do. Second, don't treat the table as a revenue forecast. No manager can guarantee income or occupancy, and any proposal that promises a specific figure deserves a harder look, not a head start.

If you manage a high-end coastal property, our guide to what to ask a full-service manager for a high-end coastal rental adds a few property-specific questions. If you are still deciding whether to hire at all, see self-managing versus full-service management.

Conclusion

Send the same six questions to every manager on your list, Atlia included, and require the answers in writing within a week. The proposal you can fill into every cell of that table is the proposal you can actually evaluate.

If you want Atlia in the comparison, ask us for the same things you are asking everyone else: the flat 10% fee and what it is charged on, repairs and supplies at cost, the staffed San Diego base covering the local-contact role inside the one-hour window, and a sample owner statement. Put our answers in your table next to the others and let the rows decide. A manager worth hiring will be comfortable being measured line by line.